Health: Public Health Grant

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, as I said, we will be making a robust case for the value of prevention in the spending review. The reduction to the grant to which the noble Baroness refers is not a new cut. It was agreed in the 2015 spending review in a difficult financial environment. Local authorities have been aware of these cuts for over a year and have been able to plan accordingly. But there is much more to public health than the grant itself—for example, our national childhood obesity strategy and NHS England’s world-leading diabetes prevention programme. As the noble Baroness knows, the NHS long-term plan has an emphasis on prevention.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I was the Secretary of State who introduced the public health grant to local government. Is my noble friend the Minister aware that this was done because many of the wider social determinants of health can be better influenced through the action of local authorities than by the NHS alone? That was the reason why the public health grant was included within the ring fence in 2010 to 2014, which guaranteed a real-terms increase in the public health grant to local authorities; this was reversed in 2014. Will my noble friend the Minister consider restoring the value and growth of the public health grant in the context of an agreement with local authorities to act on those wider social determinants of health?

[Baroness Manzoor]

I agree with my noble friend, and that is why we are making a robust case to the Treasury in relation to the spending review. Health improvement is about far more than the services funded through the grant, as my noble friend says. The transfer of local health responsibility to local government provided the opportunity to join up public health with decisions on other local services such as housing and economic regeneration. We see local authorities commissioning different kinds of public health services which better fit local circumstances and priorities and deliver improved value. We therefore recognise the importance of the grant.