Ministers urged to tax unhealthy foods

Ministers are getting under pressure to impose taxes on packaged foods containing high content of salt and/or sugar.

In a plea addressed to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, representing 35 health groups, it is highlighted that taxing unhealthy foods such as cakes, sweets, biscuits, crisps and savoury snacks would generate billions of pounds for the Treasury and cut the number of people becoming ill as a result of a bad diet.

The signatories include groups representing the UK’s doctors, dentists and public health directors, health charities including Diabetes UK and the World Cancer Research Fund, and a senior figure in the chef Jamie Oliver’s organisation.

Anna Taylor, the executive of the Food Foundation, which also signed the letter, said, “The damage the food industry is doing to children’s health is the biggest threat to our nation’s wellbeing and future productivity and this needs to be reined in – urgently.

“The government must now get bolder, creating real incentives to force the industry to align with public health goals, further and faster.”

The health groups want ministers to start tightly regulating the food industry. They said relying on the industry to voluntarily clean up its act nutritionally, as the previous Conservative governments did during 2010-24, had not yielded meaningful change.

“Voluntary reformulation programmes for sugar, salt and calories are not proving effective enough, achieving only a 3.5 per cent reduction in sugar levels of key product categories, compared to the mandatory soft drinks industry levy (sugar tax), which has achieved a reduction in total sales of 34.4 per cent between 2015 and 2020,” the letter says.

Jamie O’Halloran, a senior research fellow at the IPPR, said: “Without bold regulatory changes, our food system will continue to fall short in promoting healthy lifestyles, particularly for those on the lowest incomes.

“Expanding levies to cover other high-sugar and ultra-processed products could be transformative, especially if the resulting revenue is used to support low-income households to make healthy food choices.”

A government spokesperson said: “Obesity is a significant health challenge, which affects 26 per cent of adults and costs the NHS £11.8bn per year.

“The budget took action to ensure the soft drinks industry levy maintains its incentive to encourage healthier soft drinks, and we will publish a 10-year health plan in spring 2025.”

This comes a week after Reeves announced in the budget that the Treasury was looking into whether the sugar tax, which came into effect in 2018, should be extended to other very sweet products, including milkshakes and highly sugared coffees as it is widely regarded as having been a success.

Earlier, a YouGov poll showed public support on such taxes as long as the revenue is ploughed into children’s health.

The representative survey of 4,943 British adults by YouGov, commissioned by food campaigners’ Recipe for Change initiative, also found that 74 per cent think food firms are not honest about the health impact of their products while 61 per cent worry about the amount of sugar and saturated fat in what they eat.

Only 13 per cent believe producers will make their food more nutritious without government intervention while 72 per cent worry about high levels of processing used in food production.