‘Labour is rebuilding our NHS and our nation’s health’

There has been enormous progress made over the past century in the health of the nation.

At the time of the founding of the National Health Service 1948, most people could barely expect to reach retirement age. They were born, they worked, and then they died. Today, most of us can look forward to a long retirement into old age, thanks to advances in healthcare and public health.

The post-war Labour government removed the shame from need. Their achievement meant no one had to forgo healthcare because they couldn’t afford the bill. As medical science made huge advances over the next 78 years, the NHS has brought the best available treatments to the many, not just the privileged few, and extended the lives of millions. Alongside the NHS, action was taken to tackle the causes of ill health – cleaning up the air we breathe, the homes we live in, the food we eat, and the water we drink.

But, as the Health Foundation revealed this week, the progress of the twentieth century went into reverse after 2010. Brits are now getting sicker sooner. Between 2012 and 2024, healthy life expectancy dropped for men from 62.9 years to 60.7 and from 63.7 to 60.9 years for women. Those headline numbers hide deep inequalities beneath it – a girl born in Blackpool will fall into ill health almost two decades earlier than one born in Wokingham. That is the consequence of 14 years of Tory austerity which plunged people into poverty and left public services unable to deal with the consequences.It is the mission of this Labour government to put our country back on the path to progress, and to do so fairly – closing the gap between the richest and poorest parts of our country so everyone lives well for longer. It starts by guaranteeing a healthy start to life for every child. Banning energy drinks for under 16s and junk food adverts pre-watershed; preventing fast food shops setting up outside schools; free primary school breakfast clubs and extended free school meals, so kids enter the classroom with hungry minds not hungry bellies.

READ MORE: ‘Labour will be the Government that finally ended smoking. Reform would protect the tobacco industry not kids’

By lifting the two-child limit, we are combatting the poverty that entrenches illness before people even walk through the doors of the NHS. Sick pay for workers from their first day on the job will mean no one has to choose between getting better and getting paid. Awaab’s law, named after two-year old Awaab Ishak, will require social landlords to clean up mouldy homes before they pollute children’s lungs.

And as we rebuild the NHS, we are starting in the areas of greatest need. We’ve sent crack teams of top clinicians to places with the highest numbers of people off work sick, and they’re cutting waiting lists three times faster. Savings we are making in agency and back-office costs are being reinvested in rural and coastal health services. We’re fixing the GP funding formulas which have left the poorest places with 300 more patients per GP.

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This week a generational ban on smoking passed into law, an idea I first floated in a newspaper interview in January 2023, taking inspiration from Jacinda Ardern’s Labor government in New Zealand.

Over the past two years, the law has been hard fought in the face of vested interests in the tobacco industry. It will wipe out smoking for good, so kids today can never legally be sold tobacco. It stands up to the sharks in the vaping industry who knowingly target their products at children, having spied the opportunity to get a new generation hooked on nicotine. They will no longer be permitted to brand, market, or design products to appeal to children, and we’ll crack down on shops selling to schoolkids.

It is the landmark public health legislation of our generation. And it is heavily contested. Nigel Farage has pledged to scrap the law should Reform UK form the next government. Ironically for a party that wants to ban certain forms of women’s clothing, its leader argues that this law is an attack on freedom. But there is no liberty in addiction. The vast majority of smokers want to quit and wish they’d never started.

Here’s the problem for Farage. Every minute of every day, someone is admitted to hospital in England with a disease caused by smoking. 80,000 people in the UK die each year from smoking related illness. All of that suffering is preventable, and with this law, we are taking action to prevent it. Not only would Farage’s repeal leave children to be preyed upon by the vaping industry, it would force the NHS to pick up the tab for the sickness Farage would cause on smoking. Unless this public health change is seen through, Farage would have to fund higher costs for healthcare or impose longer waiting times on patients.

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Labour is rebuilding our health service and our nation’s health. We are once again seeking to break the link between health and wealth, so the length of your life is no longer dictated by the circumstances of your birth. That notion of ‘justice as equality’ is today contested as never before and is firmly on the ballot in British politics. It’s up to us as Labour members to get that message out ahead of next Thursday’s elections, and get our Labour councillors re-elected.

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