The sugar tax has not made us healthier but it has made our drinks less delicious
The Chief Operating Officer of Suntory, the company that makes Ribena and Lucozade, was in the Sunday Times at the weekend making vague threats to the UK government. She is not happy about a proposed change to the sugar tax and has said that if the government proceeds with it, it “would potentially mean less investment in our factory” in Gloucestershire which employs 700 people. The bosses at Carlsberg Britvic, Coca Cola and AG Barr have written separately to the Prime Minister warning of “severe consequences” if the government tinkers with the tax.
When the sugar tax was introduced in 2018, the threshold was set at 5g of sugar per 100ml of drink. The quislings of the soft drink industry obediently reformulated many of their drinks to get them below that level. Lucozade Energy and Irn-Bru now have 4.5g of sugar per 100ml while Ribena has 4.3g per 100ml. To put that in context, Coca-Cola was not reformulated and still has 10.6g of sugar per 100ml. Coca-Cola continues to be delicious. The other drinks, not so much.
The sugar tax didn’t work. Sugar taxes have never worked anywhere. The amount of sugar people consumed from soft drinks declined but it had been declining for years. Rates of obesity among both children and adults were supposed to fall but instead they rose. The only tangible impacts were the vandalisation of several much-loved soft drinks and the extraction of £250 million a year from consumers.
The vapid political class naturally consider the tax to be a masterpiece of modern statesmanship. Years after leaving office, George Osborne was still speaking about it with pride. Lacking any ideas about how to fix the country, the political pygmies in Westminster have joined forces with the activist bureaucrats in Whitehall to capitalise on the “success” of the sugar tax by extending it to milkshakes and lowering the threshold from 5g per 100ml to 4g for 100ml. In a public consultation conducted earlier this year, the government noted that 89 per cent of soft drinks now have less than 5g of sugar per 100ml and that “setting a lower, more challenging target, will … encourage further reformulation.”
It cost [the soft drink industry] a fortune to reformulate their products and most of them saw sales fall as a result
This is what has irked the soft drink industry. It cost them a fortune to reformulate their products and most companies saw sales fall as a result. The prospect of having to do it all again for the sake of cutting sugar consumption by the equivalent of what they say is “half a grape per person per day” fills them with justifiable dread. They are learning what several other industries have learned in recent years — that there is no point trying to appease the “public health” lobby. If they cut the sugar content again, what guarantee do they have that a future health secretary, equally bereft of vision, will not keep moving the goalposts?
The government is being arbitrary and capricious. The likes of Suntory cravenly capitulated to George Osborne and are now being punished for doing exactly what the government wanted them to do. They may now have to spend millions of pounds creating and advertising products that their consumers do not want (sugar-free versions of Lucozade, Ribena and Irn-Bru have been around for years for those who prefer artificial sweeteners).
There is an alternative. Rather than slide down the slippery slope with people who hate them, they could take a leaf out of Coca-Cola’s book and dust down the old recipe book. Put the sugar back in and tell the government to go to Hell. When the sugar tax came into force in 2018, Coca-Cola took out full page advertisements saying, “They don’t make them like they used to. We do.” (The Coca-Cola Company knows more than most about the perils of changing a winning product.) Putting the sugar back into soft drinks would be popular with many consumers, including my good self, and it would send a powerful signal that the vibe shift is real. So come on, Suntory. Grow a pair.
