Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford ended up squabbling live on This Morning over a discussion about the sugar tax bill.
On the news that the UK could introduce a possible ‘snack tax ’ the pair joined Matthew Wright in discussing the positive and negative impacts it could have.
But when Ruth said that the government are suggesting that the national food strategy ‘could then be used for GPs’, Eamonn saw red and cut her off.
“That’s nonsense, darling,” he told her. “They do not ringfence money. It’s like saying road tax goes towards roads.”
“Yeah but they’re saying…,” Ruth tried to interject.
“They’re saying it, but it doesn’t happen!” Eamonn continued. “It will not happen. It will go on defence spending, or something else.”
Matthew tried to play middleman and said that the government were suggesting that it could go towards the NHS, but appeared to agree that might not actually be how it played out.
Leon co-founder Henry Dimbleby has been named Boris Johnson ’s ‘food tsar’ and was tasked with creating a National Food Strategy to improve the nation's health.
His proposal includes an increase in foods with high volumes of sugar and/or salt, expanding free school meals for households earning under £20,000 a year, and a pilot scheme where fruit and vegetables are prescribed to patients by doctors.
However, Boris Johnson has since told reporters that he isn’t sold on the idea of tax hikes for the country, especially at a point where more people are tightening their purses than ever.
“We believe in tackling obesity, trying to help people to lose weight, promoting exercise and tackling junk food advertising and so on,” the prime minister said.
“I am not, I must say, attracted to the idea of extra taxes on hard-working people, let me just signal that.
“But I will study his report with interest.”
As part of his proposal, Dimbleby believes that it would not majorly affect general households, with the rules instead encouraging major companies to tweak their recipes in order to bypass the levy.
Meanwhile, Eamonn and Ruth, who have been together for 24 years and married for 12, have recently returned to This Morning to fill in for Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby for their seven-week summer break.
They were longtime hosts of the Friday episode, but left the series at the beginning of this year and were replaced by Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary.
Their on-screen return on Monday was widely praised by fans, who said “summer wouldn’t be summer without them”.
Ruth has also said she’s been delighted to return to the series, saying that it now has a ‘different vibe’ to the one they had before.
"We’ve hosted so many This Morning summers now and we always look forward to it. They are always a lot of fun the summer weeks, it has a slightly different vibe to it than the rest of the year," Loose Women star Ruth - who shares son Jack with Eamonn - shared.
"People are often tuning in on their own holidays so we look forward to hearing where people are and they send us messages about what they are doing for the summer. We’ve been doing this since Jack was really little."
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV.
