Comment: Death to the nanny state
Drinking: next up for government action?
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After half a century of failure we need to urgently reconsider our approach to drugs.
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Tuesday, 17, Mar 2009 12:00
By Ian Dunt
The proposal by the chief medical officer yesterday that alcohol units be given a minimum price was instantly shot down by the government.
But don't be fooled. Its reaction was motivated by a trio of factors which came together to make the suggestion politically impossible; recession, an upcoming election and the peculiar but rather amiable British dispensation to treat drinking as a type of sport.
Gordon Brown's argument, it hardly needs saying, failed to mention any of this reasoning. Instead, he said it was unfair to penalise the "sensible" majority in an effort to clamp down on the binge-drinking minority. But the government does precisely that every year when it draws up the Budget. Every year, without fail, the price of alcohol and tobacco goes up.
This is an entirely understandable phenomenon. Most people would rather the price went up on unnecessary, unhealthy products, rather than vegetables or baby food. But quite apart from the Budget, this government has become wedded to social engineering. And its approach has far exceeded this type of tinkering.
The smoking ban is the most obvious example. It is now considered a popular piece of legislation. When Sir Liam Donaldson made his alcohol proposals yesterday, he mentioned it as if it were some sort of high watermark for public health. Perhaps it is, but it is also a gross affront to the freedoms of the people of Britain.
Let us leave the argument about that core proposal to one side for a moment, and concentrate instead on a debate which took place immediately after the ban was voted through. This debate centred on whether private members clubs should be allowed to have smoking inside them. Publicans and club owners were hoping to sign up customers as a member for a nominal fee – say £1 – and have them sign an agreement on the door that, as a member, they did not mind smoke in the premises.
The Commons voted the proposal down, and many working men's clubs around the country are feeling the impact of that vote today. The communities around them feel it too.
This vote demonstrated quite how deep the government's contempt for the notion of individual choice went. Personal preference was an irrelevance. British adults needed to be told how to behave.
The thinking is evident across a host of policy areas. Ken Livingstone wanted to put the congestion charge up on vehicles which polluted more, although the new mayor brought an end to that. Earlier this year, the government implemented a ban on extreme pornography. It did not matter that the people featured in the pornography had consented to appear in it, nor that those who watched it voluntarily chose to do so. The government decided what was right.
When the home secretary recently pushed to make it illegal for people to use prostitutes under someone else's control, she knew she was outlawing the vast majority of sex trade transactions – estimated at around 80 per cent. I called the International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW), based in London, for their opinion. They had not even been invited to the consultation. An activist for the group wrote a comment piece for politics.co.uk explaining how so-called feminists in government considered women who chose (some of them do chose this occupation) to become sex workers as vulnerable victims who could not possibly have reached this decision from their own thought-process.
The thread which runs through these various examples is simple: a fundamental lack of respect for the idea that people should be able to chose what they do with their bodies. In the case of health, it follows from an assumption that the government best understands health outcomes. In social issues such as prostitution or pornography, it follows from the idea that government best understands moral outcomes.
It understands neither.
The government has begun to treat the British public as a collection of individual units which must be managed appropriately to ensure their productivity and longevity. It learnt its first rule from John Nash's game theory. Mr Nash, by the way, is the bloke played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. Policy wonks and free-market fanatics extrapolated from this economic theory to welfare provision, imagining that the NHS and education could function across the same lines. You've only got to look at the prevalence of management-speak in the public services to see how entrenched this thinking has become.
Health, as it happens, can benefit somewhat from this approach.
Education really can't, it's a far more complicated process than even the most advanced input-output formula can explain. This view has now been expanded to encompass the vast majority of domestic policy-making. The British public are merely economic and social units to be incentivised appropriately so they behave in the correct manner.
Most people don't know what's best for them. They place small, short-term gains over long-term benefits. They opt for a moment's sensual pleasure over an increased lifespan. Some of them watch forms of pornography which would make the man in the street distinctly uneasy. Some of them choose to participate in these movies, for money or even for fun.
But if people don't know what's best for them, governments also misunderstand their purpose. They are not moral arbiters. They are tasked with serving the people, not forcing a world view on them. The chief medical officer's demands are just the latest example of this attitude permeating the popular culture.
As the artist David Hockney so ably explained: "Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life."
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