Andrew Lansley health reforms: Councils will be handed £5bn to combat obesity

  • Health Secretary plans to created a ‘public health service’ with new reforms
  • Pledges to increase health spending in real terms
  • Local governments to devise their own schemes to tackle problems

By
James Chapman

Last updated at 3:47 PM on 23rd January 2012


Announcement: Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is to unveil plans to give local councils responsibility for public health in a bid to tackle obesity, binger drinking and smoking

Announcement: Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is to unveil plans to give local councils responsibility for public health in a bid to tackle obesity, binger drinking and smoking

Local government is to take back responsibility for public health for the first time since the 1970s and will be given more than £5billion a year to stem obesity, binge drinking and smoking.

Powerful new public health directors based in councils will be asked to transform the NHS so it focuses much more on preventing illness rather than dealing with its consequences.

Announcing the plans today, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley will argue that a decade of failure has seen obesity rates spiral – with more than a quarter of adults now dangerously overweight – sexually transmitted infections double and gaps in life expectancy between rich and poor areas persist.

Mr Lansley, who aims to create a new ‘public health service’, will say that under Labour, public health was seen as ‘something to be sidelined’.

He will announce that next year £5.2billion will be spent on public health as responsibility is returned to local authorities for the first time since 1974. In a speech to health professionals, he will also pledge that the Government will increase health spending in real terms each year after that.

From April 2013, for the first time the funding will be ringfenced, meaning public health cash can no longer be raided to bail out other parts of the system.

Public health is currently the responsibility of primary care trusts. But as these will be scrapped with the introduction of GP consortiums in 2013, it has been decided that it should revert back to local government – which is responsible for wider determinants of health, such as housing, transport and leisure.

Local government will devise its own schemes for promoting public health, though ministers favour ‘nudging’ people to make healthy choices by presenting them as social norms rather than Labour’s ‘nanny state’ approach.

Healthy choices: The scheme will see local councils promote their own schemes to tackle ways to tackle problems such as obesity, which now sees a quarter of British adults being dangerously overweight

Healthy choices: The scheme will see local councils promote their own schemes to tackle ways to tackle problems such as obesity, which now sees a quarter of British adults being dangerously overweight

One example was the use of signs in shops saying ‘most people who shop here buy at least two pieces of fruit’, a tactic which proved effective in trials.

Under the new system, local authorities will be judged against a wide range of measures including tooth decay in children and reducing the number of falls in older people, and wider factors such as school attendance, domestic abuse, homelessness and air pollution. There will also be a major push to promote breastfeeding.

Mr Lansley will say: ‘The job of the Government – and my responsibility – is to help people live healthier lives.

‘The framework is about giving local authorities the ability to focus on the most effective ways to improve the public’s health and reduce health inequalities, long-term, from cradle to grave. Moving away from an old-style, top-down, target-driven regime, and towards outcomes that we all want to see.

‘Some are straightforward and obvious. Others are more complex, maybe things you wouldn’t immediately think of.

‘But they all help us live longer, healthier lives, and improve the health of the poorest, fastest.


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A report by MPs has said that health reforms risk disrupting hospitals' efforts to provide the best care

He will also point out that ‘2000 to 2010 was a decade in which public health was seen as relatively unimportant, something to be sidelined’.

He will say: ‘Obesity rates from 2000 to 2010 rose from 21.2 per cent to 26.1 per cent so now over a quarter of adults are obese; sexually-transmitted infections, after the steep declines in the Eighties to Nineties, doubled in the subsequent decade; and health inequalities persist, with gaps in life expectancy of over a decade between people born in the richest areas and people born in the poorest.’

Mr Lansley will cite last year’s National Audit Office report which was unable to conclude that the £20billion Labour spent on reducing health inequalities was good value for money.

Councils who succeed will be rewarded with a ‘health premium bonus’ to spend on public health in the following year.

‘I want local government to be bold,’ Mr Lansley will say. ‘Really push to make things better. The health premium will encourage that, rewarding local authorities that make a real, demonstrable difference.’

In response Shadow Public Health Minister Diane Abbott MP said: ‘Labour welcomes handing local authorities new responsibility for public health. In principle, this should make it easier to deal with the social determinants of ill health and issues like obesity.  But in practise, these powers are being given at a time of unprecedented financial pressures on local councils.

‘The government has not demonstrated how it can effectively ring fence the money and stop cash-strapped councils from diverting the funds to related issues like social care.’

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Why didn’t they get Eric Pickles to promote this idea?

stupid waste of money!!!!

Councils will just use the money to up their top level salaries and perks and they’ll hire more useless jobsworths in order to upgrade themselves because they then supervise higher numbers of wastes of space.

more money down the drain… people need to be responsible for thier eating habits… ‘Big Brother’ only compounds the problem.

Before the ‘common con market’ was sold to us Britain had laws against food animals being injected with hormones and God knows what else, we HAD no obese people!
If our politicians would ban importing meat filled with unwanted hormones and antibiotics we wouldn’t have an obesity problem and they know it.

What they need to do is shut all these fast food shop’s that that are close to school’s.If anyone’s interested I know someone who done some work for a battery hen farm.If you think these hen’s are only for laying egg’s you are mistaken.Fried Chicken yummy,I think not.

The obesity police need to concentrate resources in the Palace of Westminster first, starting with mr Pickles, before spreading among the untermenchen (apologies, any German readers, for any mispelling).

So my hard earned taxes won’t benefit me but only those who abuse themselves. Where in the grand scheme of things is ‘personal responsibility’. If you are fat ,overweight ,cannot stop eating then why as a taxpayer should I pick up your bill when your health fails you?

Not just adults, how about taking away free child bus passes unless there live several miles from school, see them every day waiting for a bus to go a couple of stops.

they will be knocking at the door at midnight, yet!! and this is not as far fetched as we think! and for the record everybody who is obese does not automatically mean it is always due to overeating -there are many medical and heriditary reasons for this – ask any qualified doctor! so butt out, you councils – doing this is crossing the line and no good will come of it – people will take so much and then will rebel!!!! take note, cameron!!!!!!!!

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