National Food Strategy author Henry Dimbleby has quit his role as a government adviser, slamming its “completely shocking” rowbacks in the war on obesity.
The Leon restaurant founder, who became lead non-executive director at Defra, said the government’s “embarrassing” climbdown in the face of pressure from the food and advertising industries had effectively left the UK without a public health policy.
Dimbleby, whose landmark report called for a raft of measures to tackle obesity, including a swathe of taxes on HFSS products, to follow the soft drinks levy, accused ministers of abandoning its plans for health after the departure of former PM Boris Johnson. He said the UK population had been left facing a “ticking timebomb”.
He was appointed by former environmental secretary Michael Gove in 2019 to draw up proposals on the environment and obesity. But ministers ignored key proposals of the plans, including a tax on products high in salt and sugar, free fruit & veg for children suffering food poverty, and an expansion of free school meals, when the government made its response to the strategy last summer.
Promised further proposals by ex health secretary Sajid Javid also never materialised, while the government has either shelved, watered down or scrapped a raft of proposals including a crackdown on junk food advertising and a ban on multibuy promotions.
Dimbleby accused food industry bosses of deliberately exploiting the cost of living crisis to persuade ministers to water down his plans. In an exclusive interview with The Grocer, he said the main blame for lack of action lay with the government, who he accused of coming up with a “handful of disparate policy ideas” rather than a strategy.
“There’s an unexploded bomb sitting underneath our society, which is the harm of the health issues from food,” he said.
“Whatever colour the government is in 10 years’ time, dealing with that mess is going to be a major part of their policy and yet everyone is ignoring it because they don’t want to get stuck in a culture war about health food.
“They’ve given up on any of their big promises. They have given up on public health.
“I think it’s completely shocking and depressing.”
Dimbleby next week publishes a new book called Ravenous, which talks about his rollercoaster experiences as the government’s health tsar during a period which covered Covid, Brexit and the war in the Ukraine. He pointed to comments made by the Bank of England’s former chief economist Andy Haldane, who recently described the worsening health of the British people as the biggest threat to economic growth.
“He’s hardly a leftwing firebrand,” said Dimbleby, who added: “Steve Barclay [health secretary] has talked about prevention, but actually if you read what he’s said it’s not prevention, it’s early diagnosis.
“He seems to be very much in the ‘let people get ill but treat it earlier’ camp. It’s an embarrassment.
”The sad thing is there a grand tradition of Tory intervention on public health. It was Winston Churchill who said the greatest asset a nation can have is the health of the citizens.
“I’m very pessimistic, I just don’t think they get it.”
The full interview with Dimbleby will feature in next week’s issue of The Grocer.
2 Readers' comments