Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has been accused of obstructing MPs investigating childhood obesity by refusing to give them access to a report undertaken by public health experts.

Dr Sarah Wollaston, Conservative chair of the health select committee, said at the start of public hearings on the issue: “The committee is deeply disappointed that we have not seen publication of the detailed evidence review. We consider that that is obstructing this inquiry.”

Wollaston has called for Hunt to share the findings of an evidence review carried out by Public Health England (PHE), which looked at the options the government could take to reduce the UK’s excessively high sugar consumption.



Work began on the review after the government’s nutrition advisory committee recommended in the summer that sugar intake should be halved to make up no more than 5% of calorie intake per day, which is about seven teaspoons for an average adult – less than that contained in a can of Coca-Cola.

PHE said at the time it would look at all options, including a sugar tax, but the government has stated unequivocally that it is not intending to go down that road. Hunt told Wollaston that the PHE review would inform its child obesity strategy and be published alongside it later in the year.

MPs on the committee asked many questions about the sugar tax, which was one of the proposals in a document on the way forward prepared 18 months ago at Hunt’s request by health campaigners.

A sugar tax would play a major role in reducing the incidence of obesity, including among children, Prof Graeme MacGregor, chairman of Action on Sugar, told the committee. “We were asked by Jeremy Hunt for a plan to prevent childhood obesity over a year and a half ago,” he said.

“We gave him a brief but very well-evidenced document with seven actions as to how he could prevent childhood obesity. Since then he has done absolutely nothing. In spite of going back to him 10 times, we were always fobbed off by Department of Health officials saying they are waiting for further information.”

MacGregor said there was evidence from Finland and Mexico that a sugar tax worked. There was also evidence that taxes on alcohol and cigarettes worked. “I don’t think we need any more evidence. We should put a sugar tax in straight away, particularly on soft drinks,” he said.

MacGregor said supermarkets were waiting for the government to require them to take action to reduce sugar, which would force producers like Coca-Cola and Pepsi to follow suit.

But he said pressure from the authorities had been undermined by former health secretary Andrew Lansley’s decision to transfer nutrition policy away from the Food Standards Agency to the Department of Health and launch a voluntary public health responsibility deal with the industry, which asks food companies, restaurants and supermarkets to promise to cut the calories in their products.

“He put the food industry in charge of public health,” said MacGregor. “He actually made the food industry responsible for policing themselves. It’s unbelievable. I have had many meetings with him and shouted at him, but he was absolutely impossible to persuade. We have a ridiculous system now where nothing is happening to improve the food supply because of Andrew Lansley.”

In later evidence, the food industry argued that a sugar tax would not work. Ian Wright, director general of the Food and Drink Federation, told MPs: “We don’t think it is right to demonise one nutrient,” arguing that calorie reduction was what mattered.

Chris Snowdon, director of lifestyle economics at the Institute for Economic Affairs, claimed the comparison with cigarette taxes was invalid because tobacco is taxed at 700%, which would not be possible for a food product. A 20% tax on sugary drinks “will have some effect on the margins of consumption”, he said. “It would be so small you would probably struggle to measure it.”