It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the two marvellous opening speeches. It is a shame that the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) has now gone after intervening so often—I think he intervened seven times—and then complaining that there was no debate. Now he has deserted us to spend more time with his prejudices.
This is a debate of great importance. I will not go into detail about what generation I was part of, but there were certainly no sugary drinks when I was a child. There was a lot of water—we had that in abundance—but, being a child of the war, I had the benefit of a system of rationing whereby the amount of food was carefully controlled. We were probably the healthiest generation there has ever been, because we were quite rightly denied the damaging drinks that children often have now.
I want to make just one point, which is about who comes first in the Government’s thinking. Where does public opinion come? Where does the health of children come? We all know the misery that is felt by overweight children, and how they suffer mockery at school. It is
extremely damaging for them. There is no question but that we have to do all we can to avoid obesity as far as possible. We can do something about it, but a number of decisions taken by the Government have been extremely worrying, and one of them is this—turning down the idea of a sugar tax.
Recently we had a debate in the House on a sensible Bill, which was supported by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), a Scottish National party Member. She is a breast cancer surgeon, and she made a splendid, well-informed speech in support of the Off-patent Drugs Bill, which would have been greatly beneficial to people in need of drugs, as it would have made them cheaper, and also to the health service. Members of all parties spoke in the debate, but the only voice for the party of Government was the Minister’s, and we know that the pharmaceutical industry—big pharma—has the Government in a throat hold. It is big pharma that decides what happens.
I believe it is the same with “big sugar”—that the Government are excessively influenced by the commercial interests of the sugar industry. They are also influenced by other industries—the alcohol industry is very powerful. We recall that at the time of the 2010 election there was an impassioned plea by the future Prime Minister. He said he knew what the next scandal in Britain was going to be: it was going to be a lobbying scandal. He knew about lobbying, of course, because he was a lobbyist himself. He knew about the influence of lobbyists—the odd word here, the invitation to a reception there, getting someone on side by inviting them to a seminar in the Alps, or in Bermuda. That is the way they work. Are the Government listening to the financial concerns of the greedy lobbyists, or to the pleas for a more rational, healthy policy?