Abstract
Objective: The UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) (announced March 2016; implemented April 2018) aims to incentivise reformulation of soft drinks to reduce added sugar levels. The SDIL has been applauded as a policy success, and it has survived calls from parliamentarians for it to be repealed. We aimed to explore parliamentary reaction to the SDIL following its announcement until two years post-implementation in order understand how health policy can become established and resilient to opposition. Design: Searches of Hansard for parliamentary debate transcripts that discussed the SDIL retrieved 186 transcripts, with 160 included after screening. Five stages of Applied Thematic Analysis were conducted: familiarisation and creation of initial codebooks; independent second coding; codebook finalisation through team consensus; final coding of the dataset to the complete codebook; and theme finalisation through team consensus. Setting: The United Kingdom Parliament Participants: N/A Results: Between the announcement (16/03/2016) - royal assent (26/04/2017) two themes were identified 1: SDIL welcomed cross-party 2: SDIL a good start but not enough. Between royal assent - implementation (5/04/2018) one theme was identified 3: The SDIL worked - what next? The final theme identified from implementation until 16/03/2020 was 4: Moving on from the SDIL. Conclusions: After the announcement, the SDIL had cross-party support and was recognised to have encouraged reformulation prior to implementation. Lessons for governments indicate that the combination of cross-party support and a policy’s documented success in achieving its aim can help cement the resilience of it to opposition and threats of repeal.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e51 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Public Health Nutrition |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 24 Jan 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Jan 2024 |
Bibliographical note
For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author-Accepted Manuscript version arising.Data Availability Statement
The lead author has full access to the data reported in the manuscript.Funding
This project was funded by the NIHR Public Health Research Programme (Grant Nos. 16/49/01 and 16/130/01). At the time this study was conducted, CPJ, MW, ELR, HF, TLP, DT, JA, OA, SA were also supported in part by Programme grants to the MRC Epidemiology Unit from the Medical Research Council (grant No. MC_UU_12015/6 and MC_UU_00006/7) and the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence – funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health Research and the Wellcome Trust, under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration is gratefully acknowledged. HF received funding for her PhD studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council and Public Health England, and she has received further discretionary funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of any of the above-named funders. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Keywords
- government
- health policy
- parliament
- political debate
- soft drinks industry levy
- sugar tax
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- Nutrition and Dietetics
- Medicine (miscellaneous)
