Health and Social Care Update

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

Those were two extremely thoughtful and well-informed questions. I do not have the statistics at my fingertips, but I would be glad to go back to the department and write to the noble Baroness with the information she has asked for.

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the NHS on the tremendous success of this vaccination programme, but we should now be doing more to look forward to how we can address the social and public health inequalities that led to Britain having one of the largest death rates from Covid in the world. I speak in the context of being a Cumbria county councillor. The public health grant is what we use to tackle issues such as obesity, inactivity, smoking and alcohol, which greatly reduce people’s chances of surviving deadly disease. Next year’s public health grant is a mere £19 million—an increase of just 1.4%. Not only is this, frankly, a pathetic response to the social problems that led to all these Covid deaths, but it is unfairly distributed. Central London authorities such as Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster, receive three to five times the amount per head that our authority in the north receives. How do the Government explain this and how does it square with their levelling-up agenda?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we are committed to both our levelling-up agenda and the kind of population health measures to which the noble Lord alludes. That is why we are bringing the NHS and social care Bill before the House later this year. I hope that the noble Lord engages with it to bring his insight to the debate.