Boris Johnson once called health labels on wine bottles 'lunacy'

Anti-obesity drive includes consultation on new calorie-counting warnings for alcoholic drinks

Boris Johnson denounced health labels on wine bottles as “lunacy” as a backbench MP and urged producers to “fight, fight, fight” against their introduction.

In a newspaper column, the then MP for Henley dismissed advice on weekly alcohol units as “a load of bunkum” and said the risks of drinking during pregnancy were “not very great, frankly”.

He branded the then Labour government’s plans for health labelling as “infantilising elf and safety madness” that would not make “a fluid ounce of difference” to Britain’s alcohol intake.

His comments stand in stark contrast to the anti-obesity drive launched by the prime minister on Monday that includes a consultation on calorie labelling for all alcoholic drinks.

Setting out the plan, the Department of Health and Social Care cited estimates that alcohol consumption accounts for almost 10 per cent of the calorie intake of those who drink, with around 3.4 million adults consuming an additional day’s worth of calories each week – the equivalent of an additional two months of food each year.

“Research shows the majority of the public (80 per cent) is unaware of the calorie content of common drinks and many typically underestimate the true content,” said the department.

“It is hoped alcohol labelling could lead to a reduction in consumption, improving people’s health and reducing their waistline.”

If approved, the calorie warning would be added to the information currently carried on every alcoholic drink as the result of a voluntary agreement in 2007 between ministers and the drinks industry that gives the number of units of alcohol per glass or bottle and the recommended safe drinking levels, along with guidance for women who are pregnant.

In a Daily Telegraph column at the time, Mr Johnson attacked the information labels as “insane”, a “piece of nonsense” and a “loony plan to put health warnings on wine bottles”.

“The British Department of Health … wants a new label on every bottle of wine and every other alcoholic beverage, with a load of baloney about the risks to unborn children (not very great, frankly), the need to drink ‘responsibly’, the websites of various ‘drink awareness’ organisations and a load of bunkum about the piffling number of ‘units’ the government thinks a man and a woman can drink ‘responsibly’ every week,” wrote Mr Johnson.

“No government in history has yet thought the people so moronic that they needed to be told, on the bottle, that wine could go to your head.”

Accusing the then public health minister Caroline Flint of trying to “make a name for herself” with the labelling initiative, he asked: “Does she really imagine that her ghastly ‘message’ will make a fluid ounce of difference to the total quantity of alcohol consumed by the British people?

“Will it remove a single splash of vomit from our pavements? Will it deter a single bladdered ladette from hoisting another one away? Of course not.”

Johnson warned that the new labels would “make wine bottles more expensive to recycle” and might bring the UK into conflict with EU single market regulations on the free circulation of goods.

And he wrote: “I say fight, fight, fight. Fight against these insulting, ugly and otiose labels.

“Oblige Flint to bring her plans to parliament, so we can fight for common sense against the tide of infantilising elf and safety madness, and when we have won we can help her to drown her sorrows in the time-honoured British way – and our potations will be equally responsible, or irresponsible, whatever it says on the label.”