Time to get tougher on obesity, Rishi? Charities demand PM declares smoking-style war on UK’s bulging waistline which costs the NHS and economy £27BILLION, £10bn more than tobacco

Rishi Sunak was today facing demands to ramp up efforts to shrink Britain’s ever-growing waistline in the wake of his blitz on smoking.

The Prime Minister yesterday unveiled a radical plan to effectively ban kids born in 2009 or later from ever being able to buy cigarettes.

In what he branded the ‘biggest public health intervention in a generation’, the PM vowed to ‘break the cycle of addiction’ and save billions, with smoking thought to drain the economy of £17billion a year — around £7billion more than what tobacco duties currently raise.

Anti-obesity charities and health experts hailed Mr Sunak for his willingness to take ‘bold’ action on public health.

But they slammed his ‘unforgivable’ hesitancy to tackle the obesity crisis engulfing the nation, with nearly two-thirds of adults now fat. 

Health bosses estimate obesity costs £27billion a year through its knock-on effects such as the health complications of being fat and the impact on the NHS, as well as secondary costs like lost earnings from time taken off work due to illness and early deaths.

Even this sum could be an underestimate, however. Drug firms behind weight loss jabs have calculated the annual bill to be in the region of £58billion.

The Obesity Health Alliance, a coalition of over 50 health organisations, including the British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK, said the PM needed to treat the obesity crisis as seriously as he did tobacco.

A spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘If this Government really is committed to seeing the next generation grow up healthily, they also need to tackle the flood of unhealthy food and drink in our supermarkets and on our highstreets.

‘Frustratingly, the UK Government has failed to implement its own legislation to stop children being relentlessly bombarded with manipulative ads and promotions.

‘This is not about removing choice. 

‘It’s about making the healthy choice the easy choice. Protecting children from junk food marketing will shift the spotlight away from harmful products and onto healthier options.’

The OHA spokesperson claimed that, like with action on tobacco, such polices have broad public support.

They added: ‘Over 70 per cent of people want this move on tobacco – and over 70 per cent want action on junk food adverts.

‘We hope that following the positive response from parents up and down the country to today’s smoking policies, all political parties will be emboldened to go further and faster to protect child health with action on obesity.

‘It’s the right thing for children, the sustainability of the NHS and our whole economy.’

Professor Graham MacGregor, chair of campaign groups Action on Sugar and Action on Salt, echoed the calls to treat obesity as seriously as smoking.

He said: ‘We strongly urge the PM to enforce equally robust measures to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis which, by the Government’s own estimates, put the societal cost of obesity much higher, at £27billion.

Professor MacGregor labelled the Government’s current hesitancy to act on the issue as ‘unforgivable’.

He said: ‘Postponing the already delayed advertising restrictions, which is part of the Government’s own evidence-based childhood obesity strategy, was unforgivable – especially given two thirds of adults are living with overweight or obesity and putting real pressure on the NHS and costing lives.

‘The Government must stop delaying and commit to key measures like mandatory targets for calorie, sugar and salt reduction, well enforced marketing and promotions restrictions and clearer, mandatory food labelling.’

Back in 2020, ex-PM Boris Johnson announced a ‘world-leading’ obesity action plan, partly inspired by how his own weight put him at greater risk of becoming severely ill when he caught Covid. 

However, he later shied away from radical proposals by then Government food tsar, Henry Dimbleby.

The co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain called for taxes on salt and sugar — but his pleas sparked outrage after it was calculated they may add £60 to each person’s annual food bill.  

Proposals that were approved— a ban on buy one get one free deals on unhealthy snacks and junk food adverts before 9pm — have subsequently been delayed by Mr Sunak.

Originally planned to be rolled out this year they both policies have now been pushed back to 2025, with the PM citing an unwillingness to put pressure on family bills and wanting to give industry more time to prepare for the change, respectively. 

Eton-educated Mr Dimbleby resigned from his role in March this year, citing a lack of appetite within Government for necessary changes to tackle obesity.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4 today, Mr Sunak was today forced to defend why he was taking such strong action on smoking but not obesity. 

In June, when he pushed back part of the Government’s anti-obesity strategy, he stated he believed in ‘people’s right to choose’.

Defending his actions, Mr Sunak responded by claiming obesity is not the biggest health crisis facing Britain and ‘smoking is different to a pack of crisps or a piece of cake’.

While Mr Sunak was keen to highlight the £17billion cost of smoking in his plan, his phased ban — which will mean raising the age someone can legally buy tobacco from the current 18 by one year every 12 months — may not bring immediate cost-savings.

Current smokers will still be able to buy cigarettes for the rest of their lives, so the costs of tobacco-related harm are likely to remain for years, even if they do dip as fewer and fewer people take up smoking.

However, an analysis, by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) suggests reducing smoking levels in the future will save the country money in the long term.

CRUK-commissioned experts previously totted up the benefits of Britain becoming ‘smoke-free’ — where less than 5 per cent of population smokes. 

They found if smoking was reduced to this level, it would prevent nearly 100,000 new cases of smoking-related disease, such as lung conditions and various cancers, by 2035.

This would save the country £67million in direct NHS and social care costs, as well as £548million in broader costs to society in 2035 alone.

CRUK also did a similar analysis on obesity, estimating the benefits of reducing the obesity in the population by 1 per cent annually over 20 years between 2015 and 2035. 

This was calculated to save the nation £300million in health costs and £1.3billion in broader costs to society in 2035 alone. 

While the obesity costs the nation more financially, the death toll from smoking is generally considered to be higher.

The Government estimates that smoking causes 76,400 preventable deaths per year, more than double the 30,000 deaths per year attributed to obesity.

However, as smoking rates have declined some experts claim obesity is now a bigger killer overall.

A 2021 study from Glasgow University estimated smoking use was responsible for only 19.4 per cent of deaths in England and Scotland in 2017 compared to 23.1 per cent for deaths due to excess weight.

Despite Mr Sunak’s anti-smoking plan being hailed by health campaigners, he has faced harsh criticism over the plan to curtail people’s individual choice. 

Critics of nanny-state interventions branded the plan ‘ludicrous’, ‘illiberal’ and ‘anti-conservative’, while a smoker’s group called it ‘creeping prohibition’. Questions are being floated over whether it will even work.

Ex-PM Liz Truss — who this week demanded the Tories to ‘stop taxing and banning things’ — is also set to vote against Mr Sunak’s plans when he offers MPs a free vote on the issue in the House of Commons. No date has been confirmed yet.

Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, today condemned the ‘stupid’ plan and said it would just create a ‘black market’.

Tory MP Philip Davies, who pledged to vote against the ‘anti-freedom’ proposal, said it was ‘unenforceable’. He said: ‘In 40 years’ time, are we really going to be asking 60-year-olds for age ID?’ 

There are also other financial consequences for the ban. 

Taxes on tobacco duties are estimated to raise £10.4billion for the Treasury this year, although less than the Government’s £17billion cost estimate.

Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and a strong critic of the smoking ban, said the Government was ‘misleading’ public on what the policy will cost. 

‘The Government is being extremely misleading about the cost of smoking, perhaps because it has been wilfully misled by the anti-smoking lobby,’ he said. 

‘Of the £17billion it claims smoking costs the country, £14billion is made up of “lost productivity” such as lost earnings. 

‘These are not costs to taxpayers and it is wrong to compare them to the £10billion in tax paid by smokers in tobacco duty.’

Mr Snowdon added that as legal tobacco sales decline, non-smokers will have to pay more tax to meet the drop in revenue. 

Smokers’ rights group Forest also disputes the figure, saying it is based on ‘nothing more than estimates and calculations’. 

The UK’s biggest tobacco firms warned Mr Sunak’s bold plan ‘threatens significant unintended consequences’. Almost £1bn was wiped off their shares as a result of the announcement yesterday. 

Former health minister Lord James Bethell, who worked in the Department of Health and Social Care during the Covid pandemic, defended the PM’s war on smoking.   

Whilst stating he supported efforts to make Britain less obese, calls for similar action on obesity were ‘comparing apples and oranges’ in terms of ambition, he said. 

However, Lord Bethell added that he hoped the positive reception to the proposal will embolden Mr Sunak to make similar bold steps to improve public health in the future. 

‘I am reassured by the thought that by taking this step…No10 will take courage from this experience and look again at obesity measures, gambling levies and so on,’ he said. 

He added that predictions Brits could face higher taxes from Mr Sunak’s proposed progressive smoking ban were ‘rubbish’. 

‘If you don’t spend a £1,000 on cigarettes a year, you spend a £1,000 on something else which is also taxed,’ he said.

‘It may not be quite the same rate… but you’re still going to pay quite a lot of tax.’

He also said Britain will enjoy a boost to productivity from people being able to work for longer without having to leave work due to being in poor health. 

‘The idea is that this is going to create pressure on the public finances is complete rubbish, quite the opposite,’ he said. 

The PM’s proposed smoking ban follows in the footsteps of New Zealand, which late last year became the first country to introduce a ban on future generations buying tobacco products. 

It also comes after major Government-backed review last year led by Dr Javed Khan proposed England introduce a progressive age ban on the sale of tobacco.

Dr Khan recommended ‘increasing the age of sale from 18, by one year, every year until no-one can buy a tobacco product in this country’.

In his Government-commissioned report published in June 2022, Dr Khan said that without urgent action, England would miss the 2030 ‘smoke-free’ target by at least seven years, with the poorest areas not meeting it until 2044.

The cost to the nation, both to the cash-strapped NHS and society more generally, as well as the curtailing of individual freedoms, is an important part of the debate on introducing public health measures.

While these financial figures represent ill-health, they don’t account for the human suffering people living with heath conditions and cancers.

Both obesity and smoking have been well established as increasing the risk of serious health conditions that can damage the heart, like high blood pressure, as well as cancers. 

Smoking has been estimated to cause one in five cases of cancer in the UK, and for being the cause of one in four cancer deaths.

In comparison, obesity has been estimated to cause one in 20 cancer cases in the UK. 

The World Health Organization estimates that global deaths from tobacco use are 7.2million each year, with obesity killing 2.8million people per annum. 

Latest data from the Office for National Statistics show traditional smoking is already on the decline in the UK.

It found just 12.9 per cent of adults, around 6.4million people, smoked cigarettes in 2022.

This is the lowest proportion of the adult population since records began in 2011.

People aged 25 to 34 years were the most likely to be smokers at 16.3 per cent with Brits aged 65 years and over the least at just 8.3 per cent. 

Whilst smoking has declined overall compared to historic levels, the opposite is true for obesity. 

An estimated 65 per cent of British adults are now too fat, compared to about 50 per cent in the 90s, with rates expected to increase even more in the future. 

Childhood obesity has also seen a similar trend. 

Nationally, one in 10 youngsters are now obese by the time they start Reception, rising to one in five by the time they reach Year 6.