The Grocer – 24 August 2019

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Get the full story at thegrocer.co.uk 24 August 2019 | The Grocer | 3

T

he soft drinks sugar levy was the perfect construct.

Even if there were doubts that the tax would reduce

childhood obesity, the then Chancellor George

Osborne’s promise to spend the £525m it would raise

investing in school sports projects was hard to begrudge.

So a ‘healthy pupils capital fund’ was set up, to which

schools could make applications for funding on health and

wellbeing projects. And a review of some of the programmes

undertaken in 2018/19 is enough to bring a warm glow: kitchen

upgrades; artifi cial turf pitch replacements; breakfast clubs;

refurbishment of a derelict swimming pool. All paid for from the

levy paid out by consumers on sugary soft drinks.

And even though the size of the funding pot was lower than

the Treasury forecast as a result of soft drinks reformulation, it

was proof that the tax was working on every level.

But the soft drinks industry – and the public – has been sold

a lie, because further scrutiny reveals that less than 25% of the

projects paid out by the fund were for health and wellbeing

projects. The rest has been spent, as one healthy children’s food

charities put it, “plugging holes in the education budget”.

Over £300m from the fund was siphoned off in 2018/19 to pay

for fi re alarm upgrades; replacement boilers; fi re safety

equipment; damp proofi ng; rewiring; new roofi ng; emergency

asbestos removal and toilet refurbishment. Of course, these are

all important works in their own way, But they’re hardly in the

spirit of the levy.

And it gets worse. It’s emerged (p5, p24) that the healthy

pupils capital fund was for one year only. In other words, all the

money that the soft drinks sugar levy raises from now on will

just be trousered by the Treasury. That’s an appalling betrayal

of schools and schoolchildren, with budgets stretched, and the

height of hypocrisy from a government that had pledged, in the

Childhood Obesity Plan that accompanied the launch of the soft

drinks levy, a “groundbreaking” programme of measures to

halve childhood obesity. With new PM calling for a review of

‘sin taxes’ there are rumours that the sugar tax will be scrapped.

No chance. That money is gone now.

“All the money the

soft drinks sugar

levy raises from

now on will just

be trousered by

the Treasury ”

Adam Leyland, Editor

“Amazon has

discovered for

itself that life on

the high street

is brutal”

Ian Quinn, chief reporter

Hands up who would like to see

boarded-up shops turned back

into thriving retail units?

Surely only the most stay-

at-home online fanatics would

want otherwise, but achieving

it is another matter entirely – as

events continue to show.

The Grocer has learnt some

of the startups off ered a place

within pop-ups paid for by

Amazon have been failing to

even make it through their two-

week occupancies, such is the

shift to online trading.

That’s with no crippling

business rates to deal with and

tokenistic £150 a week rent.

There’s an extra irony that

Amazon, so oft en blamed

for killing the high street,

has discovered with its own

experiment that life on the high

street is brutal. And the results

should send a stark warning

to Jeremy Corbyn, whose plan

to force landlords to open

up boarded-up premises for

startups and co-operatives may

sound appealing, but hugely

underestimates just how the

online hurricane is whipping

through the high street.

No government or opposition

has yet come up with a

successful solution, but one

thing is for sure: it won’t be able

to turn back the clock.

More on pages 5, 10

for more opinion see pages 20-

To comment on an article, or read what

others say, go to thegrocer.co.uk

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quote of the week

“Many of the proposals

in the Childhood Obesity

Plan require spending,

and yet , outrageously,

they have made zero

commitments to ringfence

the soft drinks levy”

p6, 24