Northern areas will miss out on extra health funds, Labour says
PUBLIC HEALTH budgets are effectively being cut or frozen in a host of northern areas where Covid-19 case rates are higher than the national average, according to Labour.
It said new pressure on public health spending, which has impacted 2021/22 budgets, will hit efforts to tackle the pandemic, especially in “red wall” areas of traditional Labour heartlands where Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party saw victories during the 2019 election.
Labour said research by the House of Commons Library revealed that a total of 100 local authorities will receive no additional funding to their public health budgets per person once funding for the anti-HIV drug pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is taken into account.
One in six areas set to miss out on an increase in cash currently have coronavirus case rates of
more than 100 per 100,000, including areas that went from red to blue in 2019 such as Wakefield, Bury, Dudley, Redcar and Darlington, according to Labour.
The party said, although on paper public health funding for local authorities in 2021/2022 was £45.4 million higher than in 2020/21, the uplift was in fact less than half that once added funding for rollout of PrEP has been taken into account. Funding for PrEP has been allocated to local authorities from April 2021 to cover costs associated with its provision and its related services, party officials said.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “A strong local public health response is crucial to getting on the front foot in the battle against Covid in local areas.”
According to the research commissioned by the party, 31 local authorities will experience a fall in per capita funding in this financial year. Of the local authorities that will see a cut in allocation, two-fifths have case rates higher than the national average.
Almost 70 local authorities will experience no increase in per capita funding, the Commons Library research suggested.
Of these, Barnsley, North Lincolnshire, Bradford, Sheffield, Blackburn and Darwen and Leicester all have case rates more than double the national average.