Health Inequalities priorities for government

Equality Public Health

Labour’s Health Inequalities strategy had some success

Trends in life expectancy
Trends in life expectancy in the most deprived Local Authorities and the rest of England and the absolute difference 1983-2015.

What can we learn from the experience of the programme?

Good points:

  • Cross government
  • increase in equitable investment.
  • Progress on child and pensioner poverty.
  • Technical support for local action.

Bad points

  • Top down.
  • Ignored mental health inequalities.
  • Didn’t address income inequalities, disability poverty.
  • Didn’t empower disadvantaged communities

Priority 1.

Ensure resources for health are distributed to reduce inequalities in life chances between places.

Experience of getting the resources to the right places:

NHS & Local Authority funding per head
NHS & Local Authority funding per head 2002-2016
Funding in London
London does better than the rest of England

What was the impact of the NHS resource allocation policy from 2001 to 2011?

Cuts in council budgets
Cuts in council budgets 2010-2015
  • Review and simplify current systems for allocation of public resources to local areas.
  • Reinstate health inequalities objective for the NHS resource allocation policy.
  • Make reducing inequalities an explicit objective of local government and education allocation formulae.
  • Progressively shifting more resources to disadvantaged places.

Priority 2.

Devolve power – increasing the influence that the public has over how resources are used.

The Devolution Deception
The Devolution Deception

Radical devolution

Priority 3.

Increase the public health benefits of the social security system.

Public Health Toolkit

The benefits budget is twice as big as the health budget

Who gained most….

Poverty trends 1994-2014

This 10 year rise in absolute poverty is unprecedented since records began

  • Prioritize reducing child and disability poverty.
  • Ensure benefit payments provide an adequate income for healthy living.
  • Ensure the benefit processes is supportive and treats people with respect.
  • Reduce conditionality and sanctions.
  • Evaluate the health impact of any changes to the benefits system.

Priority 4.

Develop universal, comprehensive, high-quality early Childhood care and Education.

  • Extend the 30 free hours to all two-year-olds.
  • Provide affordable high-quality childcare through direct government subsidy.
  • Progressive investment to ensure that the places exist to meet demand.
  • Transition to a qualified, graduate-led workforce, by increasing staff wages and enhancing training opportunities.
  • Extending maternity pay to 12 months
  • Halt the closures and increase the amount of money available for Sure Start

So my 4 Priorities for Health Inequalities:

1.Ensure resources for health are distributed to reduce inequalities in life chances between places.

2.Devolve power – increasing the influence that the public has over how resources are used.

3.Increase the public health benefits of the social security system

4.Develop universal, comprehensive, high-quality early Childhood Care and Education.

national health inequalities strategy

and Re-establish a national health inequalities strategy.

This was presented at our conference Public Health Priorities for Labour