Message to government: stop splashing the cash on 'public health'

The Chancellor will shortly announce the government's latest Spending Review.

Reports suggest Public health spending 'under threat' (BBC News) which can only be a good thing.

We've been arguing for a long, long time that funding the likes of ASH – a political lobby group in all but name – is a disgraceful and ineffective use of public money.

It's shocking that ASH receives public money and even more scandalous that local councils give more dosh to their doppelgängers around the country.

People (including the prime minister) complain that frontline services are being cut yet councils still give handouts to Smokefree South West and other anti-smoking lobby groups.

SFSW shares an office in Bristol with Public Health England. What's the point of SFSW when PHE is making exactly the same noises about smoking cessation? The same is true of many more anti-smoking groups.

I suspect a great many smoking cessation services could have their funding cut with few people noticing the difference. How successful are they? Are there any figures?

E-cigarettes seem to be the most successful smoking cessation tool around (according to vapers, anyway) and they're driven by the private sector.

And let's put a stop to all those dreary conferences public health campaigners spend so much time attending. Seriously, it's a wonder Linda Bauld and Deborah Arnott are ever at home.

I'm delighted £200m has already been removed from this year's council public health budgets. Let's cut those budgets even further and make councils think twice before spending finite funds on unnecessary anti-smoking initiatives such as signs designed to stop adults smoking in outdoor public places.

Some matters should be beyond the remit of local councils. Smoking outside is one of them. It's also none of their business if adults choose to smoke at all.

I'll be watching the Chancellor's statement with interest. Fingers crossed.

PS. See also Council spending on Public Health is being largely wasted (ConservativeHome).

My old friend Harry Phibbs writes:

£160 million is spent by councils on smoking cessation. For Leeds City Council the programme included someone dressing up as a kangaroo and going round a shopping centre telling people smoking was bad for them.

Some of the money meant for smoking cessation has been diverted into political lobbying (in contravention of the rules that Council funds should not be spent in that way).

For example Public Health Action/Smoke Free South West has been paid over a million pounds this year (from Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Plymouth, Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, Torbay and Wiltshire councils). The organisation is quite open about its lobbying activities – for instance in support of plain packaging. Similar concerns arise with FRESH North East and Tobacco Free Futures.

My own council [Hammersmith and Fulham] is spending £924,000 on anti-smoking campaigning and activity of various sorts. I suspect those who quit would have quit anyway.

Well said, Harry. If one London council is spending almost a million pounds on anti-smoking initiatives, how much money is being spent nationwide? I think we should be told.

Comments

[Misty]

Forgive me if I’ve mis-remembered this, but I thought that around (I think) a couple of years ago, one of the local health authorities in the South West announced that they would no longer be funding one of the anti-smoking hangers-on groups (“Smoke Free South West” or something like that, maybe?) because they were, essentially, providing the same services (education and stop-smoking support) that was now being provided by the NHS’s own smoking-cessation services, so it was pointless funding both of them. It was in the news for a very short while and then vanished. Did that happen (but get quietly airbrushed from the headlines, for fear of encouraging other health authorities to do the same), Simon, do you know – or did the zealots kick up such a stink that the health authority capitulated in the face of the biggest-ever foot-stamping episode in history??