Bytheway...Areourleadersinthralltovestedinterests?

SOMETIMES — well, often in fact — government health policy seems to be directed at destroying the very will to live.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a lecture by Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, claiming the UK can improve its cancer survival rates with earlier diagnosis.

At that very moment, I had in my hand a report that says some GP practices are being paid for reducing the number of referrals they make for hospital investigations.

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has recently announced plans for great advances in terms of cancer diagnosis and treatment. And now we learn of this latest move — with the aim being to save money, as usual — which all practising doctors consider to be unethical.

It has been estimated that one in two people born after 1960 will be diagnosed with cancer at some time in their life; and that in areas of greatest deprivation, the incidence of cancer is greatest — due to smoking and obesity, which is in itself a result of poor diet. Surely our politicians must focus on this? Yet as the annual conference of the Royal College of General Practitioners recently heard, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has dropped a plan for a special tobacco tax levy aimed at paying for the health costs of the damage caused by tobacco.

And now David Cameron has ruled out a sugar tax, without apparently even bothering to read the report from Public Health England that backed such a tax.

It’s enough to drive you to drink — if only that wasn’t a reminder of another government public health failure, when it caved in to pressure and performed a U-turn on the plan to introduce minimum pricing on alcohol.

Is it all fatuous thinking that pretends it’s policy, or calculated cunning designed to protect vested interests?

I’ll leave you to decide.