It feels as though barely a day goes by without a flurry of headlines warning us about our lifestyles. One day we’re too fat, the next we drink too much and the day after that we’re told we’re vaping to excess. All of this bad news can be dizzying, and the challenge of replacing our bad habits with healthy ones has long confounded policymakers.
The levers most often pulled by politicians have ‘ban’ or ‘tax’ written on them. If there’s a perceived public health crisis, the easiest thing to do is criminalise unhealthy behaviour and move on. This isn’t party-specific. Under Tony Blair, smoking was banned in pubs. Under the Conservatives, the generational smoking ban was proposed, and the sugar tax introduced. Having promised to ban pre-watershed fast food ads, and with a ban on smoking outside pubs under consideration, Keir Starmer’s government has now picked up the nanny-state baton.
From drugs to tobacco to alcohol, acts of prohibition like these rarely work. What they do instead is fuel violent black markets and push substance abuse underground. Yet regardless of the evidence against them, there are still many who feel the prohibitionist approach to public health is the most effective.
The latest proposal in this vein comes from the Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-wing think tank. They have recommended that employers who fail to provide a ‘healthy work environment’ for their employees should face legal action, including fines and public censure. The IPPR says that the remit of the Health and Safety Executive (the regulator for workplace safety) should be expanded to deal with poor health caused by work, including obesity, anxiety and depression, in the same way as workplace accidents, such as falling off a ladder.
If Labour are serious about their desire to boost investment into the UK, the last thing they should do is listen to proposals like this. Signalling to businesses that they’ll be punished if they fail to provide their workers with enough fruit and veg is a surefire way to repel them. Unfortunately, resisting such policies may not come easily to a government that has already proved its taste for intervention in the labour market.
Getting Britain to be healthier is important, but that’s all the more reason to back policies that actually work. Hysterical headlines aside, we are a concerningly tubby nation. Some 64% of British adults are now overweight, with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or more. This includes around 28% who are obese (with a BMI of 30 or more). This is double the percentage figure in 1990. Maintaining a population this unhealthy is an expensive business. Obesity is estimated to cost the NHS £6.5bn a year – a bill that ultimately falls on the taxpayer.
What if there were a way to tackle these issues that didn’t require punitive measures on firms or individuals? It turns out there might be. This week, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced that revolutionary weight-loss jabs will be rolled out to get obese people back into work. Streeting confirmed that he had secured a £280m investment from world-leading pharmaceutical company Lilly to develop the drugs and work on new ways of administering them.
While the technophobic, reactionary part of me wants to yell ‘get them on a treadmill and be done with it’, the optimist in me disagrees. This is a genuinely forward-thinking approach to tackling two of Britain’s major issues – poor health and worklessness. By harnessing innovative and effective new medicines (just ask Robert Jenrick), the Government is taking a light-touch, positive approach to improving people’s lives.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that it is Streeting spearheading this. As far as I can tell, he is the only member of the Cabinet still at least paying lip service to his party’s pro-growth election promises. In an interview with Trevor Phillips last week, Streeting bemoaned the amount of red tape holding the NHS back and seemed to echo former Google boss Eric Schmidt’s assertion that the UK could do with a ‘minister of anti-regulation’.
We will of course have to see how successful Streeting’s plan to cut our waistlines is, but it just goes to show that when they think about the challenges we face in a considered way, politicians – even Lefty ones – can see past their base instincts and pass policies which might actually help. Let’s hope for a bit more of it.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
