Chancellor Slashes Public Health services to the bone

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced a £200 million in year cut to the public health budgets in England and the Department of health is holding a snap consultation over the summer how to axe the budgets.

Councillor Alan Hall, who sits on the governing body of London’s Kings College Hospital and also chairs Lewisham Council’s public scrutiny function, said: “This is a cruel conjuring trick that will directly damage public health services. The Chancellor has slashed them to the bone and now he’s cutting through the bone itself.

“Because he’s transferring the services from the NHS to local authorities he thinks that we won’t notice. But they are still the same services and public health will suffer.

“We have had scarlet fever in children at record levels this year and this is the work of public health clinicians locally. Most of Lewisham Council’s health budget is tied up in NHS contracts and axing £1.5 million in this financial year will affect services.

“He’s cutting preventative health care and so will inevitably put greater strain on the NHS. This damages not only the poorest communities but it damages all of us that benefit from preventative health services. It’s a cruel con-trick that will backfire on all of society”

The Public Health budget was directly run from the NHS but transferred to local councils in 2013 with child health service budgets transferring this year. The public health budget  funds many direct NHS services such as sexual health clinics in local hospitals, health protection, drug and smoking healthcare and children’s health programmes like promoting vaccinations and breast feeding.

Local authorities up and down the country are waking up to the consequences of the announcements by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 4th June 2015. The Department of Health launched a four week consultation on 31st July what it describes as a technical consultation on how to cut £200 million in year from England’s public health budgets previously agreed for this financial year 2015-16.

The consultation document called: Local authority public health allocations 2015/16: In-year savings reveals that Lewisham is earmarked for an ‘in-year’ cut of £1.5 million pounds.

This was first published on Alan Hall’s own blog.