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Public Health (England)

With the greatest respect, the hon. Gentleman misunderstands my point. Also, I am concerned that my primary care trust, which was in balance in the last financial year, had to bail out his PCT in the East Riding, which massively overspent. There are higher health inequalities among my constituents than among those in the East Riding, so I am not going to take any lectures from the hon. Gentleman. I am concerned that yesterday a lot of Opposition Members spoke about wanting additional funding for their constituencies and constituents. They failed to grasp the bigger picture in relation to public health. All that Conservative Members seem to be interested in is keeping money going into the acute sector. They do not seem to be able to grasp that, if we put money into the preventive public health agenda now, that will save money in the long run. It is a shame that there still seems to be a disappointing, old-fashioned view among Opposition Members. I want to turn to a few of the interesting and exciting initiatives that are happening in Hull, which, as I have said, has poor health standards. We have high levels of coronary heart disease and teenage pregnancy, but we are starting to address and turn around some of those issues. That does not happen overnight. A generational commitment has to be made. We already have a joint director of public health, Dr. Wendy Richardson, who is jointly appointed with the PCT and the local authority. She is doing an excellent job. That leads me on to a piece of work that has been jointly commissioned. The local authority and the PCT are on board. The scheme is about free healthy school meals in all our primary and special schools in the city and it is the only initiative of its type in the United Kingdom. It focuses on the nutritional and educational benefits of getting children to eat well while they are at school. It is called the eat well, do well scheme and the children all get a free breakfast, free fruit throughout primary school, and free lunches and after-school refreshments, all of which are healthy. I point out to the hon. Member for Southport, in particular, that take-up has increased. In some of our schools in the city centre, take-up of free healthy school meals is more than 90 per cent. The pilot, which has been going on for about two and a half years, is being evaluated by Hull university. Professor Colquhoun is providing interim reports, which all show that the policy is having a dramatic effect on the well-being of children in our primary schools. We might not see the savings from the scheme for 20, 30 or 40 years, when the children will have grown up and might otherwise have developed problems such as coronary heart disease, cancer and diabetes. However, we are making the investment now, and that fits in well with investing now to save for the future. The scheme is making a real difference to educational achievement in the city, but the public health angle is the key reason why it should continue. It is disappointing that the Liberal Democrat council has an old-fashioned view—a silo mentality—of what local authorities should provide and what health services should provide. I am keen on examining ways of pooling budgets so that joint work can be carried out, given that such projects can provide positive outcomes. I am not suggesting for one moment that such a scheme should be implemented throughout the whole country. I am interested in what works locally. We have talked a lot about local initiatives for local problems. The scheme seems to be working in Kingston upon Hull, but I am not sure that it is needed somewhere like Kingston upon Thames. There is great public support for the scheme. A poll that was held between 27 and 31 January by the Hull Daily Mail, my local paper, showed that 76.6 per cent. of respondents supported continuing the scheme as free for all children in primary and special schools. That shows that there is a real commitment to the scheme in the local community. It is depressing that there is such an old-fashioned silo mentality about what local authorities should and should not provide. We all have a duty to improve the public health of our communities. I will take up what the hon. Member for Southport said about public health needing all the friends that it can get. He is absolutely right; it is just a great shame that the Lib Dems are not friends of public health. Teenage pregnancy has been an ongoing problem for the city of Hull for many years, but the Labour Government have put resources into trying to tackle it. They have given resources to provide education about the means to avoid teenage pregnancy. They are tackling the underlying circumstances that motivate young people to get pregnant, and they are supporting young parents to get back into education and training and to access health services so that they can make positive choices about future conceptions. The latest figures show that the trend is going down again, which is welcome, but there is still some way to go. I want to focus on two projects that show best practice involving boys and young men. There is a sexual health project in Hull for those people that is run by Cornerhouse, which undertakes one-to-one support and group work and trains staff working with young people around the city. Additionally, work that is going on with young fathers has been highlighted as a model of best practice. However, there is still a funding problem with that. Unfortunately, the Lib Dem council seems to fail to understand that it has a duty to this mainstream scheme. The primary care trust is providing 50 per cent. of the funding and the local authority should be providing 50 per cent. There seems to have been a problem involving the Liberal Democrat council accepting its responsibility. It is a great shame that the council is not a friend of public health. The doula project in Hull is unique to the city because it is the only project in the country that uses volunteer doulas who are trained to get alongside and befriend pregnant women and to provide extra support to mothers in the early weeks and months after birth. The excellent project helps to provide a focus on public health by working with young families, especially mothers. It is funded through Newland and Avenues Sure Start, which highlights the commitment to improving public health across the piece. We need to consider pooling budgets and to examine local area agreements and strengthening the role of local strategic partnerships. We need to make sure that public health is at the centre of local policies and the decisions that are taken locally. At the moment, we are still acting as if we are in silos and do not all have a responsibility for public health, but we all do.