Only bad policy can follow from generally believed untruths

Policy is not one of these things where we can, randomly, alight upon the correct answer. It is necessary to understand the problem, even to work out whether there is a problem, that needs to be dealt with before the correct solution can be crafted.

If, for example, the gender pay gap is about children and their care then that is where any solution needs to be found, not in reports about the size of the gap. If Covid death rates vary by Vitamin D levels then that is where the solution is to be found, not in tirades about racism. Note the if there - the if being that important point. If those are not the causes of the perceived problems then the solutions will be found elsewhere.

So it is with these food restrictions:

Supermarkets in England are to be barred from displaying unhealthy food and drinks at checkouts or using them in buy one, get one free offers, as part of a proposed government crackdown on obesity.

The planned restrictions were praised by health campaigners as a “bold first step” in Downing Street’s promised campaign against obesity.

The checkout restrictions will apply to other sales-boosting locations such as the entrances to stores or at the end of aisles. Similar rules will apply for websites, banning sales links to unhealthy foods on places such as homepages, or at checkout or payment pages. Restaurants will no longer be able to offer free refills of sugary drinks.

There must, for this to be allowable in a free society, be some significant justification. The problem with this being that not only is there no such justification, the one on offer is not in fact true:

Prof Graham MacGregor, the group’s chair, said: “Finally, Downing Street is acting decisively with a bold first step to restrict the sale of junk food on multi-buy offers and at checkouts, and taking on one of the biggest threats to Britain’s future health – childhood obesity.”

We’d not support such restrictions even if childhood obesity were a real problem. But that’s the thing, it isn’t anyway:

In England 63% of adults are classified as overweight or living with obesity, while a third of children leave primary school overweight or obese.

That number given for children simply is not true. And yet it’s a widely believed number and is one that - quite obviously from the above - is used to drive policy. As Chris Snowdon has been pointing out over the years.

It just isn’t true that one third of children are obese. Therefore this untruth cannot - sorry, should not for of course it is being - be used to justify policy. The argument in favour of this sort of technocracy, that the wise will save us from ourselves, is that the technocrats be both wise and informed. When their heads are filled with blatant lies then the system not only doesn’t work it has entirely lost its justification, hasn’t it?