The Dark Side of the Street

Last week (18th of September), the New Statesman posted an interview with Health Minister Wes Streeting. The 41-year-old MP for Ilford North used the opportunity to fight back against his Nanny State reputation, stating, “I don’t want to be the fun police.”

However, the evidence is hard to overlook. Moreover, if Labour continues to reject a surefire way to reduce the pressure on the NHS, it’s hard to accept their justifications for increasingly authoritarian measures on health.

That £22 billion hole

Since coming into power, Rachel Reeves and other Labour politicians have shouted about the £22 billion blackhole at every turn. While the full scale of Treasury overspending might have caught Labour by surprise, the IFS Director Paul Johnson suggested in The Times that it was “entirely predictable”.

Starmer spent the election cycle telling voters their taxes would not rise. When he got into power, he slashed the winter fuel allowance and announced they would have to raise taxes in October’s budget. Now, Streeting is using that same deficit to justify policies to save the NHS.

The more Labour pushes the narrative that they were totally blindsided by the deficit, the more it looks like they went into the job unprepared. What figures were they working off? What impact did they think Sunak’s £20 billion NI tax cut would have on the Treasury? Were the public sector pay awards not factored in? What about the £6 billion for housing asylum seekers?

A new approach to health

Ara Darzi’s recent report on the NHS paints a bleak picture of a public health care system in dire straits. Without action, there is a very real possibility that it could go to the wall. Per the article:

Labour is planning three major shifts: moving from an analogue to a digital NHS; transferring care from hospitals to communities, and focusing on prevention rather than merely cure.

This shift towards a more preventative type of health care is sensible, but how to get there is up for debate. Banning smoking in outdoor areas or putting fast food ads after the watershed feels like fiddling around the edges.

As Streeting says:

“I’m not remotely interested in being the fun police or telling people how to live their lives. What I do recognise is that people are becoming sicker sooner in life and we’ve got to push chronic disease and illness into later life because it’s good for the economy and it’s how we make the NHS financially sustainable.”

Streeting wants to save UK citizens from chronic illness. There is a golden opportunity to make a massive impact by reducing smoking-related death and disease. However, to do this, Streeting must change his hostile stance towards a vaping industry that he recently promised to come down on “like a tonne of bricks”.

How vaping and nicotine pouches can help the NHS

Around 13% of UK adults are current smokers. However, in the UK’s most deprived areas, it’s almost double at 24%. People who smoke are 35% more likely to visit their GP. Cancer Research UK forecasts that ending smoking would “free up 75,000 GP visits each month”.

Some estimates suggest that smoking costs the NHS £2.6 billion each year through GP visits, prescriptions, hospital visits, and so on. Yet, according to ASH, if we factor in the total economic costs and loss of productivity, that figure is closer to £21.8 billion.

Recent data from ASH shows that “nearly 3 million people in Britain have quit smoking with a vape in the last five years.” If the government were less fixated on a teen vaping epidemic that doesn’t exist and more focused on supporting the most successful cessation method we have, then that £21.8 billion would fit very neatly in that black hole left by the Conservatives.

So, how badly does Wes Streeting want to save the NHS? I guess we’ll find out.