The government has been accused of attempting to “bury” controversial plans to tackle preventable ill health in
England just hours before a new Prime Minister is revealed.
A consultation into proposals for tackling the causes was published by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Cabinet Office late on Monday.
The green paper outlines a range of proposals aimed at improving the country’s health, including pledging to ban the sale of energy drinks to children under 16 and an ambition for England to go smoke-free by 2030.
It also said that if the evidence shows the soft drinks industry has not made enough progress on reducing sugar, it will extend the Soft Drinks Industry Levy to milkshakes - also known as the ‘milkshake tax’.
But the government was accused of “slipping” the paper out and trying to “bury it in the dying days” of the current administration. A new Prime Minister will be revealed on Tuesday.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth branded the new green paper “extremely disappointing”.
He accused Health Secretary Matt Hancock of shelving plans to extend the sugar tax to milkshakes and also an expected levy on tobacco firms to fund smoking cessation services.
Ashworth added: “There are serious questions for Matt Hancock to answer on why he has slipped this important green paper out at this time.
“It looks like he is trying to bury the bad news that he buckled under pressure from
Boris Johnson and the corporate lobbyists running his campaign.”
The Royal College of Nursing’s professional lead for public health Helen Donovan said the plans appeared to have been “buried in the dying days of the current government”.
She added: “One way to earn the faith of healthcare professionals would be to urgently pledge to restore cuts to the public health grant which local authorities rely on to deliver essential preventative services such as sexual health and smoking cessation services.
“In addition, the community nursing workforce is unprepared with widespread vacancies and staffing shortages.
“In healthcare, our goal is to think of a person’s wellbeing over an entire lifetime, not just in the short term. It’s once again disappointing that short-sighted Government policy still doesn’t reflect this.”
The green paper said disability-free life expectancy of 62 years for women and 63 for men will need to rise to 67 and 68 respectively by 2035.
But it admitted the green paper will not deliver this on its own, with further details promised in the government’s response to the paper.
The consultation sets the ambition of England going smoke-free by 2030 by smokers kicking the habit or moving to “reduced risk” products like e-cigarettes.
It said the Government will end the sale of energy drinks to children under the age of 16, with the full policy to be set out “shortly”.
The paper also said the Government will be publishing chapter three of the childhood obesity strategy, launching a mental health prevention package and setting out a new vaccination strategy.
Other proposals include reducing salt intake by 7g a day, reviewing the evidence on sleep and health with a view to “informing the case for clear national guidance on the daily recommended hours of sleep”, publishing a national genomics healthcare strategy, and commissioning an evidence-based review of the NHS Health Checks programme.
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