Defanging the Nanny State

In 2016, the IEA and EPICENTER launched the first edition of Dr Christopher Snowdon's 'Nanny State Index', which tries to measure the degree of restrictiveness of paternalistic policies that interfere with personal lifestyle choices in various areas. 'Nanny state' is obviously a pejorative term, which already signals disapproval. Nannystatists would not describe themselves in that way. They would describe themselves as 'public health activists' or as campaigners against 'the industry'. The Nanny State Index itself, though, is completely value-neutral. It simply measures the extent to which government policy deliberately raises the price and/or decreases the availability of particular products, irrespective of whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. If I published, say, a weather report, and labelled it in a way which signals a personal preference for cooler temperatures over heatwaves, you could still make use of the report even if you did not share my preference. The same is true of the Nanny State Index. A public health activist could simply rename it the 'Public Health Protection Index', and use it for their own purposes. They could treat a high score on the index as a cause for celebration, rather than, as Dr Snowdon does, as an undesirable outcome. Nonetheless - I have never seen a public health activist use the index, or a variant of it, in such a way, and this is probably not a coincidence. It would not suit them to draw attention to it. Public health campaigners like to portray Britain as a laissez-faire economy, where producers of health-harming products can peddle their wares with minimal interference. In their version of events, British governments are in thrall to industry pressures, and therefore too timid to introduce the robust measures that would be required to improve people's health. (...)