Austerity measures threaten to exacerbate health inequality, ministers warned
Joe Lepper
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Children's campaigners have backed a stark warning from government health adviser Sir Michael Marmot that cuts to children services and increased taxes for poorer families threaten to increase health inequality.
Sir Michael’s latest findings on health inequality reveal that just 59 per cent of children achieved a good level of development by the age of five in 2011.
Although this is up three per cent on the previous year’s figures, he warned that health inequality could worsen due to cuts to services such as children’s centres and a focus on indirect taxation, such as last year’s VAT hike.
Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children, said: "Sir Michael has shown why it is crucial that children and families must be an avowed priority, both nationally and locally, in this time of austerity: nationally, as government makes its welfare reforms and decisions over child benefit; locally, as councils make their budget decisions – especially on crucial services like children centres."
She added that the latest figures revealed offered "a stark reminder of how we as a nation are letting our children down".
The findings have been published by the UCL Institute of Health Equity, which was previously known as the Marmot Review Team.
This found improvements in life expectancy overall but marked regional differences in improvements in child development. While in Slough there was a 13 per cent increase in the number of children achieving a good level of development between 2010 and 2011, in East Sussex there was a fall of four per cent.
Next year councils are to take responsibility for public health, a move public health minister Anne Milton hopes will reduce regional health inequalities.
She said: "It is great that people are living longer but we know that much more must be done to narrow the gap of health inequalities. This is one of the driving forces behind our reform of the public health system.
"Health inequalities are caused by a complex web of factors and need a cross cutting approach at every level of government. That is why we are giving councils the power and the budget to tackle public health. From next year, councils will get ring fenced budgets to help local people get healthier and to reduce health inequalities."
