Well, yes, this is rather the point

Clearly there would be whining but this is rather the point of the exercise:

Health secretary Matt Hancock was under mounting pressure last night to say who will take responsibility for the national fight against obesity after his controversial decision to close down Public Health England caused dismay among experts.

Today shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth is writing to Hancock to demand answers, amid fury from campaigners and officials, who point out that it is less than a month since Boris Johnson, the prime minister, launched a national anti-obesity strategy, claiming it was crucial to the fight against Covid-19 and the nation’s health.

But last week Hancock pulled the plug on Public Health England, the body that has been responsible for fighting obesity, and announced that it would be replaced by the National Institute for Health Protection that would focus on external threats to the UK, pandemics and infectious diseases, but not inherit the public health protection roles of PHE.

The justification for government action - whether that be in limiting the freedoms of those being directed, or the spending of those taxed to pay for it - is third party effects. What individuals do which affects only those individuals is no damn business of government in a liberal and free polity.

Yes, this does indeed mean that those who wish to eat themselves into a pile of blubber get to do so.

Public Health England has rather missed this base and basic point. Which is one of the reasons for doing away with it. It is not just that is has been provably incompetent when there actually was a pandemic, it’s that it’s been poking its nose in where public health has no business.

Do please note that, as we’ve been saying for well over a decade now, obesity does not in fact cost the NHS money - the third party justification oft used. As the obese die younger in a lifetime health care system this means they save, not cost, the NHS money.

The aim of having a new organisation is to be able to get around having to slice off, excise, those overweening parts. Instead it’s possible to only pluck out the needed parts - pandemics etc - and tell the rest to go hang.Perhaps more politely than we would but that is the point and aim.

That there won’t be a national obesity strategy, nor a bureaucracy in charge of it, is the very point.

It is of course possible that we’re mistaken in this but if we are then someone’s missed a damn good trick.