In this Institute of Economic Affairs briefing, IEA Director of Communications Callum Price speaks with Dr Christopher Snowdon, the IEA’s Head of Lifestyle Economics, about his new book Inside the Sausage Factory: The Illusion of Evidence-Based Policy Making. The conversation looks at four public health measures from the 2010s, plain packaging for tobacco, minimum pricing for alcohol, the sugary drinks tax and the crackdown on fixed-odds betting terminals, and asks whether the evidence used to justify them actually held up.
Snowdon explains that each policy tended to rest on a similar package of evidence: modelling showing how the measure would work in theory, an example from another country that had tried something similar, and an expert review that gave it a stamp of approval. He argues that much of this evidence was weak or asked the wrong question. Plain packs were obviously less attractive, but that did not mean people would give up smoking. Modelling predicted large falls in alcohol deaths and in obesity that never materialised once minimum pricing and the sugar tax came in. In his view the evidence was rarely what decided the outcome.
The second half turns to what really drove these policies through. Snowdon makes the case that pressure, not evidence, was the deciding factor, with professional and often state-funded campaign groups generating media coverage while almost nobody organised against the measures. He draws on public choice theory to explain why millions of affected consumers stayed silent, why politicians took the path of least resistance, and why ministers from George Osborne to Rishi Sunak reached for these policies to build a legacy or shift the headlines. He closes on the recent move by the Government to restrict social media for under-sixteens, argues that opinion polls are a poor basis for lawmaking, and suggests defunding state-backed pressure groups as a place to start.
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