|  | With food inflation at 18 percent, Rishi Sunak last month postponed the ban on BOGOFs on ‘unhealthy’ food until 2025. BOGOF stands for ‘buy one get one free’ but the ban would have gone beyond such deals and include any volume price discount, such as 3 for 2 or 50 percent extra free’. The original plan even included the humble meal deal which millions of people rely on for their lunch, but the government must have known that this would be unpopular and excluded it from the final legislation.
The Welsh Assembly has no such concerns. This week it announced that it would be putting forward legislation to ban meal deals if any element of the sandwich, snack or drink was deemed to be high in sugar, salt or fat.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Government is being lobbied to raise the minimum price on alcohol from 50p per unit to 65p. This comes after Public Health Scotland declared that the policy, introduced in 2018, has had ‘a positive impact on health outcomes’. As I explained in The Critic, a full reading of the official evaluation casts serious doubt on this claim. Although Public Health Scotland says that minimum pricing reduced the number of alcohol-specific deaths by 13 percent, the grim reality is that the alcohol-specific death rate in Scotland is at a ten year high and is much higher than in England.
Regardless of the evidence, it was perhaps inevitable that Public Health Scotland would declare that minimum pricing ‘worked’. Even if they had said it failed, campaigners would have called for the price to be increased. But alcohol duty is already set to rise by 10 percent in August and the problem for the average household is not that beer and sandwiches are too cheap, but that the cost of living is far too high. Politicians cry crocodile tears over inflation, but never acknowledge how much of it is due to their own plans and schemes. |
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| Christopher Snowdon
IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics
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| |  | Faith in Markets?Abrahamic religions and economics
This week, the IEA published ‘Faith in Markets? Abrahamic religions and economics’, edited by IEA Religion in Economics Fellow Benedikt Koehler. The book features contributions from a variety of authors, all exploring the links between free markets and the three major Abrahamic faiths. Many assume that whatever merits a broadly market system may have, social justice must be supplied from somewhere else. And since religion is very much concerned with social justice, it must be seen in opposition to the market. The essays in this book present one kind of challenge to this view. Looking into the origins and histories of the three major Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – the authors find market exchange to have been important in them all. The essays selected for the volume are reprinted from Economic Affairs, the refereed academic journal jointly produced by the IEA and the University of Buckingham.
| Have faith… Benedikt summarised the book’s argument in ConservativeHome and outlined some key examples of compatibility between faith and free markets. |
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| | The IEA also hosted a panel discussion on the book, which can be viewed on YouTube. The discussion was chaired by IEA Academic and Research Fellow Lord Kamall and the panellists were Benedikt Koehler and Dr Billy Christmas. |
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| | | | | Director General Mark Littlewood, The Times | The great Brexit swindle… Seven years after the Brexit vote, we are still yet to feel its benefits. If policymakers are serious about seizing Brexit opportunities, free trade and deregulation must take centre stage. |
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| | | | Editorial and Research Fellow Professor Len Shackleton, The Daily Express | In hot water… Thames Water, Britain’s largest water supplier, is on the brink of collapse. Predictably, many have called for its nationalisation, but with low storage capacity and other critical issues, nationalisation would be no quick fix. |
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| | | | Communications Officer Harrison Griffiths, The Critic | The illusion of control… Taking back control is what the Leave campaign promised to disenfranchised voters in 2016, but has it been delivered? Given the growth of the state in recent years, the answer is resoundingly no. |
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| | | | Economics Fellow Julian Jessop, The Daily Telegraph | Fake news... ‘Greedflation’, the notion that high inflation is driven by corporate ‘greed’, is taking hold. This is fundamentally unsound economic theory and neglects the inflationary impact of increased government spending. |
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| | | | | | Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh, CityAM | More money than sense… Higher bond yields have hit investment into ESG hard, and potential investors should be wary of what they’re getting into. A recent study shows that ESG has proved ineffective in reducing emissions. |
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| | | | Matthew Lesh interviews Nima Sanandaji, IEA YouTube Channel. | Red mist… Sweden is often hailed as one of socialism’s success stories, but is the actually the case? According to new research, Sweden has closer ties with free markets than you might imagine. |
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| | | Reem Ibrahim awarded Linda Whetstone Scholarship | | The IEA is delighted to announce that IEA Communications Officer Reem Ibrahim has been awarded the Linda Whestone Scholarship.
In honour of Linda’s extraordinary work promoting freedom around the world, 30 percent of Reem’s time will now be spent on growing the IEA’s international network and communications.
Alison Rankin Frost, who is kindly funding this scholarship, had this to say:
“Linda’s contribution to identifying and resolving barriers to opportunity and prosperity was extraordinary. This Scholarship celebrates her international reach and influence. We hope that her name and her work, being carried forward in this way, will encourage others, throughout the world, to recognise that all people can live in greater freedom.” |
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| | The Hong Konger screening and panel discussion | | Co-hosted by the IEA and Catholic Social Thought Project, St Mary’s University Date: Tuesday, 6 July Time: 18:00 – 21:00 Location: 2 Lord North Street, SW1P 3LB RSVP: There are limited spaces available for this event, please email [email protected] to apply.
The film is a moving documentary about Jimmy Lai, the entrepreneur, newspaper publisher, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Catholic convert and who, having escaped to Hong Kong as a child, has been imprisoned by the Chinese government for his pro-democracy activism.
The panel will include: Lord Kamall (Chair), Professor at St. Mary’s University & IEA Academic Fellow Benedict Rogers, human rights activist Fr. Robert Sirico, President emeritus of the Acton Institute and alumnus of St. Mary’s University
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