Labour’s health mission: toward the right diagnosis but what about the treatment?

As a nation, we’re getting sick in all kinds of ways. Life expectancy gains have stalled, people are living more years in bad health, and we have record numbers of people not working due to their health. It’s clear that significant change and investment is needed to address the plethora of health challenges the UK is facing. This is important – first and foremost – because good health is the foundation of social justice. The health of the people is the supreme law, as Cicero put it. But it is also the foundation of a prosperous country.

In a major report last month, IPPR’s commission on health and prosperity found that lost earnings due to long-term sickness cost the UK economy £43bn in 2023, equivalent to 2% of GDP. And this is just the earning component of long-term sickness; its cost to businesses, the self-employed and via short-term sickness is additional.

This relationship between health and the economy makes it a big potential vote winner. Public polling consistently shows that health and the economy are the top two public concerns right now. An agenda built on the interactions between the two could be an election winner for any party.

Labour’s health mission: on the way to getting it right

So there is perhaps no more important mission for Labour to get right than its health mission. And in setting the aspiration and purpose of what the party would aim at in government, the good news is it is well on the way to getting it right.

There is rightly an NHS component of this mission, with a focus on workforce, prevention, community and technology. And this aligns with IPPR’s own vision for a 21st century – rather than 20th century – NHS: one still true to its founding principles but designed around the health realities of today, rather than those of 1948.

But far more important is the commitment to making some of the biggest improvements in healthy life expectancy and health inequality in history. It is through healthier lives that we will make the biggest gains on social justice and prosperity. And delivering healthy lives will require far more than just the NHS.

System-wide change is needed to improve the nation’s health

Currently, healthy life expectancy is below the state pension age in the UK and varies drastically throughout the country. In the North East, people on average would be expected to work six years in poor health before they reach the state pension age. Not only does this variation lead to wider inequalities, but it also makes the nation poorer, with people having to exit the workforce prematurely due to their health.

With the state pension age set to increase in future, this is an even more important area to focus upon. There are three reasons we have made so little progress in recent years. First, we fail to ‘price in’ the long-term value of health when making economic assessments of many different interventions. Second, we struggle to coordinate action across government, and third, unlike for climate and net zero, we lack a long-term, legally established aspiration for creating better health.

The IPPR commission on health and prosperity has made a series of recommendations on changing the architecture of government to enable progress. These include committing to a long-term mission, backed up by a new institution equivalent to the climate change committee, to coordinate progress across government, hold departments to account and really drive forward progress. It is welcome to see Labour’s leaders adopt these commitments. Without this wider system change, we are unlikely to see the level of ambition needed to actually see and feel our health improving.  

Funding for prevention is the elephant in the room

But there remains an elephant in the room, which is about how far Labour will commit to spending on prevention. There needs to be a wider system change as to how we value social investment in health, as currently, this is often stifled.

There may be ways to raise tax revenues for this that simultaneously deliver public health improvements – like the successful soft drinks levy. This has already prevented an estimated 5,000 primary school children from becoming obese, saving them (and the NHS) from the many problems this could cause in later life.

We can learn from this how to do more to support the nation’s health. Such levies on other health-harming industries such as alcohol, tobacco, vaping and social media could yield the same benefits as the the soft drinks levy – leading to innovation and helping us all lead healthier lives. The revenues generated could then be redistributed to ensure it has a progressive impact and further supports people’s health.

Overall, Labour’s adoption of this mission shows the party has begun to think differently about how to meet the stark health challenges the nation faces. Its vision still needs to be completed, but it’s a highly encouraging sign that the party’s leaders seem to understand that better health is the medicine our country and economy most desperately need.