PM must be led by evidence that sugar tax works, says health chief

BORIS JOHNSON should recognise the effectiveness of sugar taxation, the chief executive of the NHS has suggested, days before a report by the outgoing Chief Medical Officer (CMO) is expected to call for its expansion.

Despite the PM describing sugar taxes as being symptomatic of the “continuing creep of the nanny state”, NHS head Simon Stevens told a conference in Manchester that poor diet was now a bigger health threat than smoking.

In her report out tomorrow, Prof Dame Sally Davies is expected to set out new evidence and call for the extension of the current tax on sugary drinks.

Mr Stevens yesterday insisted that the sugar tax had shown positive results and urged the Government to take Dame Sally’s recommendations seriously. Questioned about “accusations of nanny statism at the highest levels of government”, he said: “We should be led by the evidence.

“And the evidence is going to be set out very soon by the outgoing Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies and I hope her findings will be taken seriously.

“I supported … a sugar tax precisely because it was felt that it would lead to the reformulation of the amount of added sugar in fizzy drinks, not because it would put the price up per se. And that’s exactly what’s happened.

“So when you look at the evidence of whether or not the sugar tax has worked, the answer is: it has.”

Mr Stevens also criticised the recent decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board to allow KP snacks to sponsor its teams. He warned “poor diet is now a bigger risk factor for ill health than smoking”, and called the move “disappointing”.

‘When you look at the evidence of whether the sugar tax has worked, the answer is that it has’