A new tax on chewing gum is set to be introduced to help meet the cost of cleaning Britain’s streets.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes to raise more than £100 million from the new scheme which will target gum manufacturers.
About 300,000 pieces of discarded chewing gum can be found on Oxford Street, London at any one time and it takes about three months to clean them all away.
According to a news outlet, the Government intends to recover the costs of disposing of the gum by taxing manufacturers, and hope to make the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on cleaning each year.
Previous proposals for a tax on chewing gum already won support from the Local Government Association and Clean Up Britain campaign.
A Whitehall source told the paper that the new tax would be implemented unless chewing gum manufacturers willingly offer to meet the cost of cleaning gum off Britain’s streets, and they said that there are talks to see if they will cough up voluntarily but officials are now looking at how they would impose a levy.
They want cleaner streets so they can make a significant difference to communities.
The Prime Minister, who’s described gum on streets as monstrous acne of viscous grey blotches, had previously written a newspaper column in 2010 addressing the cost of having a clear away discarded gum, which he termed a plague.
This isn’t the first time chewing gum tax has been proposed by the Government, with former Chancellor Philip Hammond having suggested one in response to tackling plastic waste, and Philip Hammond had been soliciting advice on which products and substances to include in a tax package, with chewing gum one of the options having been considered.
The proposed new tax comes as part of the Prime Minister’s attempt to restore Britain after the pandemic to make it stronger and better.
While relaunching his Government last year, speaking in Dudley, in the West Midlands, the Prime Minister said that, despite the ongoing health difficulties and emerging economic crisis, it was the time to be ambitious about the future.
Boris Johnson said the Government wanted to build, build, build, but added that he would build back better, build back greener, and build back faster.
Additionally, the Government announced a £56 million fund last week to help prop up Britain’s high streets, but shouldn’t they begin with providing more refuse bins and street cleaning operatives before they start fleecing us for any and everything?
So let’s get this right. They’ve made it illegal to leave the country, a draconian law that’s never existed in the last 1,000 years in the United Kingdom. They’ve put the country into an extra half a trillion pounds of debt and they’ve made it illegal to even enter a pub, yet they’re focusing their time on a chewing gum tax.
It’s good to see that our current Tory government are thinking about the important issues of the day.
And it seems that the Tories response to everything is tax, and it’s good to see that Boris Johnson has got his priorities sorted!
