What I dislike about the sugar tax is its snobbery
‘If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked,” says Shakespeare’s Falstaff. We can only wonder what the old rogue would have made of the tax on fizzy drinks that came into effect earlier this month.
I’ve been trying, since the levy took effect, to put my finger on what I don’t like about it. It’s not that I’m pro-sugar. It rots our teeth and our livers, while offering no compensating nutritional value. Indeed, I suspect that if it were discovered today, it would be classified as a drug rather than a foodstuff, having the peculiar property of making us want to consume it even when we’re full.
I don’t miss the old flavours of Lucozade, Ribena or Irn-Bru, which have cut their sugar content so as to avoid the impost. I did, as a child, drink a lurid yellow Peruvian concoction called Inca Kola which at that time had the distinction of outselling Coca-Cola in its home market – a distinction shared only with Scotland’s Irn-Bru, which it bizarrely resembled in taste. But I suspect I’d gag if I tried to swig either of them now.
So what is making me uneasy? I instinctively oppose new taxes, obviously. This one, though, is pretty light – a family that refused to change its consumption habits would end up paying only an extra pound a week or so. It is, indeed, a classic example of the “nudge” politics that David Cameron championed with much success, aimed at encouraging better behaviour without heavy-handedness. Just as a very slender plastic bag tax has prompted a significant reduction in use, making the hideous sight of bags ballooning in trees and clogging canals a rare one, so this gentle dig in the ribs might mean fewer hyperactive kids on sugar rushes.
And yet, and yet. First of all, there is no reason to assume that the nudge will work. Sugar consumption is what economists call inelastic, meaning that people tend to spend more, rather than buy less. Lucozade Energy, which changed its recipe to stay under the limit, has lost £62.6 million in value over the past year, while Red Bull and Monster, which stuck to their guns, have seen their profits surge. The tax may simply cut the income of low-income households.
What really bothers me, though, is the snobbery behind these levies. It’s not fizzy drinks that people object to: it’s the people who are thought to enjoy fizzy drinks. We’re not proposing to tax artisanal salt caramel chocolates. “Junk food” is a social rather than a nutritional designation: it means Doritos, not foie gras. In an age that decries censoriousness, food snobbery lingers.
In any case, sugar consumption is declining without state coercion. Christopher Snowden, a lifestyle expert at the Institute of Economic Affairs, has shown that we drink barely half the quantity of fizzy drinks that we did 2003, and believes that new tax will diminish freedom without improving health. If in doubt, we should choose liberty. FOLLOW Daniel Hannan on Twitter @DanielJHannan; at telegraph.co.uk/opinion