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I have a new IEA report out today. It's called Defanging the Nanny State and it looks at what politicians would have to do to get the UK to the bottom of the Nanny State Index. I suggest the following steps:
1. Alcohol taxes: set them at 13p per unit for all drinks to cover the external costs. This would be a significant reduction for most products. Wine duty would still be higher than in most EU countries.
2. Tobacco taxes: halve them to bring them in line with places like Italy and Cyprus. This wouldn't even cost HMRC much money because so much tobacco is sold illegally in the UK at the moment.
3. The sugar tax: get rid of it. It hasn't worked and most European countries don't have one.
4. E-cigarette and heated tobacco advertising: legalise it on all platforms with appropriate regulation of content. The e-cig ad ban is a hangover from EU membership. Ditto all other silly EU regs, e.g. banning vape juices bottles larger than 10ml.
5. Legalise snus. Another hangover from the EU.
6. Maintain the smoking ban in all state-owned buildings open to the public and have no-smoking as the legal default in privately owned buildings unless the owner explicitly permits it.
7. Abolish minimum pricing in Scotland and Wales. Ireland is the only other country that has it. The policy hasn't worked and has cost drinkers a fortune.
8. Abolish restrictions on where tasty food can be positioned in shops and cancel the forthcoming advertising ban.
9. Abolish licensing hours. Of the 30 countries in the 2023 Nanny State Index, 18 have no national legislation dictating when licensed premises have to close. Restaurants and bars should close when their owners wants them to.
Doing all this would get the UK below Germany in the Nanny State Index - but only just. Is it going to happen? No. More nanny state legislation is on its way. But this wish list shows two things.
Firstly, we have a hell of a lot of nanny state regulation and our sin taxes are sky high.
Secondly, it is politically feasible insofar as other countries have a much smaller nanny state and their governments don't get kicked out for not being paternalistic enough.
Some people might consider the proposals above to be dramatic but they would leave us in a very similar position to the likes of Luxembourg and the Czech Republic. I could have gone much further. I haven't touched daft policies like plain packaging (which only a small handful of European countries have) and I have kept the cigarette advertising ban in place. That doesn't mean I agree with them, but the task I set myself was to do the minimum required to get the UK to the bottom of the index.
Read the full report here.
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