It is “bizarre” that the preventive health agenda necessary for economic growth is talked about but rarely acted upon, according to Daisy Cooper, health and social care spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats.
The MP for St Albans (pictured) also highlighted that developing countries recognised the need for a healthy population to build their economies but this was being ignored in the UK, and she criticised a lack of action by Conservative governments.
Cooper revealed that the Liberal Democrats will be setting out a number of different policies to advance the preventive health agenda at the party’s autumn conference.
However she called for a Health Creation Unit sitting within the Cabinet Office to look at the agenda under the scope of everything from business, to planning, to licensing laws to education.
But the Lib Dem health spokesperson also said government should launch an ‘invest to save’ agenda focusing on expenditure in the right areas and restore the Public Health Grant to “at least 2015 levels”.
She also demanded more “active” government launching initiatives to enable people to live healthier lives and to have the same ambition for public health as it had for the vaccine rollout.
Cooper was speaking at the Covenant for Health report launch at the King’s Fund, which called for a commanding “resilient” cross-party commitment to “build a healthier nation over a generation, robust enough to sustain across government”.
Less talk, more action from PM
But when it came to the preventive health agenda, Cooper added it was time for the talking to stop and lamented the lack of action from Conservative prime minsters.
“We want to have cross party consensus on this but I would just say as a politician and an opposition MP that we’ve seen a lot of talk about public health,” Cooper told delegates.
“We’ve seen a lot of talk about prevention. We’ve even seen some powers created but not used.
“We’ve seen Number 10 get interested and lose interest, and for some bizarre reason this particular agenda just seems to be talked about a lot but is rarely acted on.
“Whether it’s the Prevention Green Paper in 2018 or the Obesity Strategy, I do think there has been a trail of broken promises on public health and we really need to get to grips with that.”
Wealth and health the same coin
The St Albans MP also revealed that earlier in her career she had worked in International Affairs for 10 years adding it was “obvious” to every single country in the global south that if you wanted to grow your economy, you needed to have a healthy population.
“It is absolutely the foundation of international development and international affairs that if you want to grow your economy, you need a healthy population,” Cooper continued.
“There seems to be this bizarre ignorance of industrialisation that we’ve forgotten that, and it has somehow come back into sharp relief, whereas in this country, we’re starting to say, ‘Goodness me why is it people aren’t working? Is it because they’re not very well?’
“For me, it’s incredibly bizarre but that is where we find ourselves and so we now have to remake the case that we’ve known for 30, 40, 50 years; that you need to have a healthy population and that wealth creation and health creation are two sides of the same coin.”