Health Inequalities: Office for Health Improvement and Disparities

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on securing this important debate. When the Government launched the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, renamed from the Office for Health Promotion, the Secretary of State said that it was not just a name change but

“a statement of intent—a driving mission to ‘level up’ health and ensure everyone has the chance to live happy and healthy lives.”

That is a mission that I sincerely hope all his Cabinet colleagues will commit to truly delivering on. The issue goes to the heart of the inequalities in communities such as mine. Sadly, it is an issue that has only got worse over the last decade. In the Government’s most recent national deprivation data, Barnsley ranked in the bottom 15% of the country for levels of income. Of the 318 local authority areas in the entire country, Barnsley ranked as the 19th worst for health deprivation and disability.

The Secretary of State has said that the top two priorities for the new office are preventing poor mental and physical health and improving access to health services, as has been discussed in today’s debate. As things stand, Barnsley is well above the national average for diagnoses of depression, arterial disease, learning disabilities, high blood pressure, heart failure, epilepsy, diabetes, dementia, obesity and heart disease. Barnsley East residents are almost twice as likely as residents anywhere else in the country to suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, much as a result of the thousands of men who worked down the pit. Around 8,000 miners have sadly lost their lives over the last two years.

I have raised the issue of covid death certificates with the Government on several occasions. I directly ask the Minister, again, whether she can give us an update on what the Government are doing to change guidance—it is a very simple ask—to ensure that industrial diseases are recorded on death certificates if someone, sadly, dies of covid. That is important to make sure that families receive the compensation to which they are entitled.

We cannot look at health inequalities in isolation, because income and health inequality are fundamentally linked. The ONS reports that the difference in life expectancy between the least and most deprived areas in England is 9.4 years for men and 7.6 years for women. The difference in the number of years lived in good health between the most and least deprived areas can be as much as 20. While areas such as Kensington and Westminster thrive, northern working-class towns such as Barnsley continue to be left behind.

There can be no justification for the levels of inequality that we face. Whether someone lives in Westminster or Barnsley, they deserve to live well. We have a long way to go if we are to tackle these health inequalities. They are not only an enormous challenge that the Government need to address today; they mean reversing more than a decade of decline.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maggie Throup]

If I may, I will write to the hon. Lady on that so I can make sure that my facts are completely clear, rather than giving her an answer that may not be quite accurate.

In recognition of the strong relationship between work and health, the joint work and health unit was established in 2015. It has invested in a programme of trials and tests to identify effective models of health and employment support, and it is now using that learning to develop and/or roll out services to support disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to enter and stay in employment. The 2021 spending review confirmed that the public health grant will be maintained in real terms for the spending review period, so local councils can continue to invest in prevention and essential public health services. The distribution of that grant is heavily weighted towards the areas that face the greatest population health challenges, with per capita funding almost 2.5 times greater for the most deprived authorities than for the least deprived. The allocation at local authority level will be announced shortly.

The role that local authorities play in improving public health is far broader than simply the important services and interventions funded through the public health grant. That grant is part of a wider package of targeted investment in improving the public’s health over the spending review period, including £300 million to tackle obesity; £170 million to improve the “best start in life” offer available to families, including breastfeeding advice and parent-infant mental health support; and an additional £560 million to support improvements in the quality and capacity of drug and alcohol treatment, which was announced as part of the drugs strategy. In addition, we have made over £12 billion available to local councils since the start of the pandemic to address the costs and impacts of covid-19. Of this money, £6 billion was non-ringfenced, because we recognise that local authorities are best placed to decide how to manage the major covid-19 pressures in their local areas.

[Stephanie Peacock]

I made a point in my speech about an issue that affects my area, regarding covid death certificates and industrial disease. Would the Minister either respond to it now or write to me about it?

[Maggie Throup]

I was going to answer the hon. Lady’s point shortly, but I will answer it now. I will write to her on the important issue she raised about industrial disease. We need to ensure we have everything in place to enable families to access the different forms of support available to them.

I will come back to OHID for a moment. OHID has regional teams, which will have a vital role in working with integrated care systems at regional level. OHID will produce important data and information resources, which will be vital to ICS work in improving population health. Through ICSs, we will improve local working on population health and reduce health disparities.

One of the key objectives of these reforms is to give integrated care boards the responsibility and the ability to tackle health inequalities, as made clear in NHS England guidance. This will also reinforce the role of local authorities as champions of health in local communities and empower the NHS to improve poor health.

I will answer a few of the questions that have been asked. The hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) raised e-cigarettes. I commend her for the work that she does through the all-party parliamentary group for vaping, and I reassure her that OHID will continue to monitor and publish evidence and reviews on e-cigarettes. Our tobacco control plan will be published later this year, outlining our smokefree 2030 plans.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) highlighted disparities affecting rural communities. He raised a number of issues specific to his constituency, and I am sure that the relevant Health Minister will be happy to meet him to discuss them in more detail.

The hon. Members for Bootle and for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) asked why we use the terms “disparities” and “inequalities”. I reassure them that the terms are used interchangeably, and it is important to understand that a term itself does not impact on our understanding of a problem or our response to it.

I thank the hon. Member for Bootle again for securing a debate on such an important issue. The pandemic has highlighted the impact of health disparities on people’s life outcomes and the pressures on the wider health and care system. The establishment of OHID, the creation of the new Health Promotion Taskforce Cabinet Committee and targeted investment in public health demonstrate that the Government are fully committed to tackling health disparities. I genuinely believe that by working together across Government, and with local authorities and the NHS, we can make a huge difference in improving health, life expectancy and life outcomes, particularly for the most vulnerable in our society.