IS IDEOLOGY BEING PUT ABOVE THE NATION’S HEALTH?

It’s not easy being the editor of a long-lead magazine at a time of fast-moving and wildly unpredictable news. I am writing this on Wednesday 19 October. Meanwhile, the earliest possible time you could be reading it is some four weeks hence. That’s November. To paraphrase LP Hartley, November is a foreign country. I couldn’t say with any degree of certainty what will happen tomorrow.

This missive was supposed to be about Alastair Campbell’s Talking Heads interview with Johnny Mercer MP, the Veterans’ Minister. It’s an illuminating read, I hope you’ll agree. He has some revealing things to say about Prime Minister Liz Truss that I thought would be worthy of comment. But in the past couple of weeks, politics has been perverted and deranged.

Radical economic policies have been announced and promptly withdrawn; the pound has crashed and mortgage rates have risen; both Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary have been defenestrated while serving their probation. Meanwhile, laymen like us have been forced to learn brand-new words and phrases, such as ‘gilts’ or ‘triple locks’. And don’t even get me started on the state of my stocks & shares ISA. Only a fool would wager what Liz Truss is up to by the time you see this, though I’m guessing she’s no longer having weekly audiences with the King.

So instead I’m going to talk briefly about her deputy, Thérèse Coffey. True, she too may well have gone the way of the dodo by now, but amid the daily bombshells and governmental fireworks, her political legacy has escaped the same level of scrutiny. And that is pertinent to readers of this magazine, in particular, for she is (was?) also Secretary of State for Health.

Earlier this year, in the March issue, we reported on ‘The Great Divide’ – an unprecedented directional change in which life expectancy is heading and the shocking revelation that men living in parts of Blackpool are dying 27 years younger than those in Kensington. At the time, Sajid Javid, the serving Health Secretary, committed to publishing a white paper on ‘the gap in healthy life expectancy that exists between different communities’. He promised ‘bold action… to break the link between people’s background and their prospect for a healthy life’. Javid originally said that plans would be published in spring; in early July he resigned from the cabinet. The paper has not seen the light of day.

Since Coffey was installed by Truss in September, comments have been made in various quarters about her lack of personal suitability to the role. She is not slim; she smokes. Much of this has the whiff of misogyny, not to mention hypocrisy – as I’ve pointed out many times before, I’m the editor of Men’s Health and I’m no angel. Of far greater concern is surely Coffey’s view of how the nation’s wellbeing should be safeguarded.

One of the few government policies of the new establishment so far not to be reneged upon is its decision to review – with a view to scrapping – Boris Johnson’s anti-obesity strategy. This would entail measures such as ditching the sugar tax and calorie counts on menus in eating establishments. Coffey has also suggested that she doesn’t intend to honour the government’s commitment to publishing a tobacco control plan – another of Javid’s pledges earlier this year. Meanwhile, she has apparently decided to abandon any plans to publish the white paper.

‘[It’s] toast,’ claimed a source in late September. ‘My understanding of why they’ve pulled it is [that it’s] ideological [and] an affront to this government’s view of what makes for health.’ Seeing as the paper intended to help break the link between wealth and health, by addressing problems such as the shortage of GPs in poor areas, it’s not clear what the government’s view of health might be. One might expect to find the answer in the new NHS plan that Coffey announced to the Commons shortly after her appointment. This was branded disappointing by many medical professionals, including David Oliver, a consultant in geriatrics, who referred to the proposals as ‘wholly inadequate’ and of an ‘unrealistic nature’.

Ideology is the operative word. Just as Trussonomics was exposed as dogmatic principles of fantasy by the harsh reality of the financial markets, so Coffey’s ultra-libertarian health stance and distaste for so-called ‘nanny state’ policies flies in the face of substance. ‘We are deeply concerned,’ said Katharine Jenner of the Obesity Health Alliance. ‘It would be reckless to waste government and business time and money rowing back on obesity policies [that] are evidence-based and already in law. These policies are popular with the public, who want it to be easier to make healthier choices.’

The problem is that, when it comes to health, the fallout from such cavalier political posturing is not as swift or as pronounced as the market repercussions of bonkers economic policy. We can only hope that whoever is holding the keys to the car by the time you read this is a more careful owner.