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Public Health (England)

We look forward to those that are planned. I am sure that Anita Roddick, who, as I say, has been extremely brave in her remarks to the press recently, will play a full and active part. It is a pity that it requires a celebrity to highlight such an issue for the Government—the Jamie Oliver effect. [Interruption.] I have to say to the Minister that it is all very well saying that things are rubbish and that I should move on, but I suspect that Wanless himself will continue to make disobliging comments about what she is doing in public health. He is quite clear that she is engaging in phrenetic and unco-ordinated short-term activity—the sort of thing that can be stopped and started just like turning a tap on and off. Wanless is referring to the sort of activities that the Minister mentioned in her interventions regarding plans for hepatitis C. I have had exchanges with the Minister through a number of parliamentary questions and answers. I asked about what she has done to anticipate the burden of disease that will arise as a result of hepatitis C infection. I have to say that what I have had back is a big ““I don’t know.”” The Government clearly have no idea about what this time bomb involves and have made no preparations to manage it. In public health terms, that is deeply and profoundly worrying. Developing his characterisation of a Government thrashing about in public health, Wanless attacks what he calls"““loose proposals for personal trainers which do not seem well rooted in evidence or particularly clearly thought through””." He goes on to suggest that these appendages of the ““Choosing Health”” White Paper are"““gimmicks that will discredit the public health function””." For the price of eye-catching but unproven health trainers, we could have, for example, a national programme for screening abdominal aortic aneurysm. We know that that will save thousands of lives, because the pilots have been done and the evidence base is very strong. Every month the Minister delays, however, 200 elderly men die unnecessarily. Screening does not appear at all in the 34 pages of ““Health Challenge England””. So much for evidence-based policy making.