Public Health England 'to be replaced'

The Sunday Telegraph has reported that Public Health England is to be replaced by a new agency that will specifically deal with protecting against pandemics.

The newspaper claims that Health Secretary Matt Hancock will announce a new body, modelled on Germany's Robert Koch Institute, which has taken control of Germany's response to the pandemic, later this week.

Ministers have reportedly been unhappy with the way PHE has responded to the coronavirus crisis. The Telegraph reports that Hancock will merge the NHS Test and Trace scheme with the pandemic response work of PHE.

The paper said the new body could be called the National Institute for Health Protection and would become 'effective' in September, but the change would not be fully completed until the spring.

PHE was created in 2013 - as part of an overhaul of the NHS in England under former health secretary Jeremy Hunt - with responsibilities including preparing and responding to health-related emergencies such as pandemics. The organisation currently employs around 5,500 full-time staff, made up mostly of scientists, researchers and public health professionals.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "Public Health England have played an integral role in our national response to this unprecedented global pandemic. We have always been clear that we must learn the right lessons from this crisis to ensure that we are in the strongest possible position, both as we continue to deal with Covid-19 and to respond to any future public health threat."

Christina Marriott, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health responded to the announcement: “If these reports are correct we are left with more questions than answers. We question the timing of an announcement to scrap our national public health agency, in the midst of a global pandemic and before any public inquiry any has started, let alone reported. We recognise that there have been some serious challenges in terms of our response to Covid-19, including the timing of the lockdown, the ongoing ineffectiveness of Tier 2 Track and Trace and postcode-level data previously not being available to DPHs. Multiple lessons need to be learnt before solutions can be in place in advance of the winter. To do otherwise risks avoidable mistakes in subsequent waves of the pandemic which will only harm the public’s health further. 

“Any successor organisations will stand or fall depending on whether a series of critical issues are addressed. Firstly, government must reverse its sidelining of public health. Secondly, public health cannot be defined as a narrow health protection agenda. Covid-19 has shown that tackling non-communicable diseases such as obesity and diabetes, including their health inequalities, is vital if England’s population is to be resilient to pandemics. It may be appropriate for the functions to sit in different agencies – but clear accountability for outcomes in health improvement, health inequalities and health protection must be established.

“With that accountability must come sufficient funding. The 25 per cent real term cut in its funding since 2015 must be reversed. Public health needs a medium term settlement: the annual uncertainty of budgets must be removed. There must be clarity in the relationship between national organisations and local leaders, including Directors of Public Health, particularly if they will assume greater responsibilities. And there must be clarity in the relationship with government – with sufficient independence for any new bodies to speak out but the Secretary of State’s current accountability for public health, and its agency, retained.”