Healthier lifestyle choices needed says Health Secretary

Setting out his long-term vision for the NHS, Health Secretary Matt Hancock is urging the public to take greater responsibility for their own health to tackle the rising toll of obesity and cancer.

In an International Association of National Public Health Institutes speech on 5 November, Hancock called for a big increase in people making healthier lifestyle choices and taking greater responsibility for their own health, such as reducing the amount of alcohol and junk food they consume. Currently, the Department for Health and Social Care reports that £97 billion of public money is spent on treating disease and only £8 billion preventing it across the UK - which ‘doesn't stack up’.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Hancock said there needs to be a shift in culture and in the way resources are balanced, but stressed that the strategy is about promoting prevention and not about penalising people.

Hancock said: "Two of the biggest health successes of the 20th century had prevention at their core: vaccination and cutting smoking. In the UK, both were achieved by careful and considered government intervention.

"In the UK, we are spending £97 billion of public money on treating disease and only £8 billion preventing it across the UK. You don’t have to be an economist to see those numbers don’t stack up. A focus on prevention and predictive medicine isn’t just the difference between life and death, it’s the difference between spending the last 20 years of your life fit and active, or in constant pain from a chronic condition. So our focus must shift from treating single acute illnesses to promoting the health of the whole individual. That requires more resources for prevention."

Duncan Selbie, chief executive, Public Health England said: "Investing in prevention is the smartest thing we can do. We need to move from a system that detects and treats illnesses to one that also predicts and prevents poor health through promoting health in all policies and puts people back in charge of their own health."

The plan also includes targets to halve childhood obesity by 2030, reduce loneliness through increased ‘social prescribing’, diagnosing 75 per cent of cancers at stages one and two by 2028, and to use technology to predict patients' illnesses and target advice at sections of the population.

Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Health Secretary, criticised Hancock’s remarks: “From telling people to stand up in meetings to now lecturing people about their habits, while cutting £1 billion from health services, isn’t a serious plan for improving the health of the nation.”