Office for Health Promotion

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, Covid has been an extremely important educational experience; we have backed off from using the idea of “hard to reach”. Instead, we try to be much more effective at making ourselves approachable for the kinds of people the noble Lord talks about. He is entirely right that the levelling-up agenda means nothing if it does not mean levelling up health outcomes; we are very focused on addressing the kind of health inequalities he refers to. That will be a central mission of the whole project.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The public health grant to local authorities is 20% lower per head in real terms than it was in 2015-16. Restoring spending per head to this level would require an extra investment of £1 billion. How can poor health prevention and promotion of well-being be achievable and sustainable with such reductions in local public health funds?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, local public health resources have made a huge contribution in the last year through Covid. I pay tribute to those in local public health who have contributed so much during the pandemic. The grant to local authorities is slightly beyond the scope of the Office for Health Promotion, but the noble Lord’s point is very well made.