Labour has shifted focus away from the NHS crisis. For what? | Owen Jones

The NHS is in crisis: a “humanitarian crisis”, in the words of the Red Cross. The service is Labour’s invention; at this moment, it should be the party’s focus. A pledge of £350m extra a week for the NHS was critical to the triumph of leave in the EU referendum. It was second in importance only to immigration. As Vote Leave campaign director Dominic Cummings put it: “Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result suggests no.”

I’m not going to join the Twitter outrage over the Labour leadership declaring last night that it was “not wedded” to the right of Europeans to freedom of movement. We on the left sometimes fail to appreciate the distance that exists on immigration between us and the wider population. Name your demographic group: 18- to 25-year-olds, black and minority ethnic Britons, Londoners, Scots – all decisively report a desire to reduce immigration.

Does that mean Labour just blindly tails public opinion? No: that’s not what leadership is. Labour can credibly argue that the economy comes first and membership of the single market is the party’s priority. But it needs, at the very least, a language that reaches a public that overwhelmingly wants less immigration: basically, it must not make most Britons feel as though the party is flashing a V-sign in their face.

But Labour has now shifted the focus away from the NHS crisis, and for what? It is difficult to match what was trailed yesterday and what Jeremy Corbyn has said in his round of interviews today. The leader’s message on radio and TV was not, let’s say, very clear. Many supported Corbyn because they felt he would bring clarity: no more wishy-washy, middle-of-the-road, vacillating leadership. Fists would be swinging, there would be unequivocal opposition to the Tories. Today the leadership has antagonised many of its natural supporters, who are furious about what they see as concessions on freedom of movement; but those who take a different view on immigration will have heard little from Corbyn today that resonates with them.

More puzzlingly, Corbyn floated a proposal for a maximum level of earnings. As tax justice crusader Richard Murphy puts it: “A practical policy on high pay is to deny a company corporation tax relief on payment of all salaries of more than 10 times UK median wage.” This is a workable proposal that Labour should certainly explore and – I would argue – adopt. But why today? First you distract from focusing on the NHS with immigration, then you distract from your immigration distraction. Labour needs a clear vision backed up with clear messaging, not randomly throwing proposals into the ether.

As I’ve written before, the risk with the NHS is it becomes Labour’s crutch, and clearly it needs a much wider vision. But the NHS is currently in crisis. The government is under pressure over it. Labour should be hammering away at this uncompromisingly, and parking everything else. The Labour leadership has been privately discussing a big red bus to Copeland in advance of the byelection, emblazoned with a Labour promise to implement the £350m per week NHS pledge. This is a good idea, but Labour’s Treasury team worries about costs. On this policy – at this time – surely a Corbyn leadership can afford to throw a bit of caution to the wind?

There are some ardent Corbyn supporters who believe leftwing writers should not be making these sorts of public criticisms. The rest of the media have it covered, after all. But the Tories should be on the defensive on everything from Brexit to the NHS. Instead, they are currently, shamelessly, getting away with it all. Labour should be honing a clear, straightforward message, and sticking to it. Time is against them. They only have so many opportunities, and they need to seize them.

Labour has shifted focus away from the NHS crisis. For what? | Owen Jones

Gay men are battling a demon more powerful than HIV – and it’s hidden| Owen Jones

It had been three years since I’d met up with my first boyfriend – let’s call him Steven. When he walked into a Brixton pub in June, it was a shock. I’d first met him well over a decade ago, and back then he was sporty, a bit of a health freak: other than the usual occasional student alcohol binge, relatively strait-laced. This Steven had dilated pupils, red marks on his arms, and his head jerked erratically as he spoke manically. He was addicted to crystal meth, and had an abusive relationship with other drugs and alcohol.

Steven’s story is all too revealing about a silent health crisis afflicting gay men. The words “health crisis” in conjunction with “gay men” normally conjures up the HIV catastrophe that decimated the gay and bisexual community in the 1980s. In the developed world, HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was, although the treatment can cause health complications, and in the UK an estimated 6,500 men who have sex with men live with undiagnosed infections. A far greater menace is mental distress – impossible to disentangle from a society riddled with homophobia – and the drug and alcohol abuse that can follow.

Steven has been clean for 66 days, has enthusiastically taken to treatment and volunteers at his local support group. But why – like so many gay men – did he succumb to addiction? When Steven came out, at the age of 15 years old, his parents drove him to a pseudo-clinic run by fundamentalist Christians to be cured of his homosexuality. But he doesn’t speak with bitterness. “I know they love me and they were doing the best they could,” he says. “They didn’t know what I needed, so they looked to their own experience, a culture that taught that if you were gay it was a disaster. You’d be lonely, you’d get Aids, you’d find life difficult. They felt they were trying to support me.”

The problem was far broader than his family, though. Coming out as a teenager in the early 00s meant almost inevitable bullying at school, a lack of awareness of where to find positive role models, and homophobic voices amplified by the media. “Taken together, it meant I was isolated and thought that I was the problem.” Internalising that shame at such a young age inflicts long-term damage – and explains much of his current turmoil.

It’s an issue covered by the former Attitude editor Matthew Todd in his utterly brilliant – and disturbing – recent book Straight Jacket. He identifies a number of problems that most gay men, if they were honest, would at least recognise: “Disproportionately high levels of depression, self-harm and suicide; not uncommon problems with emotional intimacy … and now a small but significant subculture of men who are using, some injecting, seriously dangerous drugs, which despite accusations of hysteria from the gatekeepers of the gay PR machine, are killing too many people.” He lists a disturbing number of gay friends, acquaintances and people in the public eye who struggled with addictions and took their own lives.

The statistics are indeed alarming. According to Stonewall research in 2014, 52% of young LGBT people report they have, at some point, self-harmed; a staggering 44% have considered suicide; and 42% have sought medical help for mental distress. Alcohol and drug abuse are often damaging forms of self-medication to deal with this underlying distress. A recent study by the LGBT Foundation found that drug use among LGB people is seven times higher than the general population, binge drinking is twice as common among gay and bisexual men, and substance dependency is significantly higher.

Why? As Todd puts it: “It is a shame with which we were saddled as children, to which we continue to be culturally subjected.” The problem gay people have isn’t their sexuality, but rather society’s attitude to it. It is “our experience of growing up in a society that still does not fully accept that people can be anything other than heterosexual and cisgendered [born into the physical gender you feel you are]”. There’s the weight of centuries of hatred and bigotry, with legally enforced discrimination only dismantled in very recent times. All gay and bisexual men – as well as women and trans people – grow up hearing homophobic and transphobic abuse. “Gay” is a word used in the playground as the repository for all that is bad. Popular films and TV programmes have largely lacked sympathetic, well-rounded LGBT characters, often resorting to crude homophobic tropes. Even the inability to hold hands with someone you love in almost any public space is a reminder that a depressingly large chunk of the population still rejects you. Coming out – a process that isn’t a one-off, but a wearingly repetitive event in different contexts – involves constant stress. And for those who think it’s all inevitably getting better, since the EU referendum, there’s been a 147% rise in homophobic hate crimes.

Society has damaged – and continues to damage – LGBT people. That’s not to overstate the case (and focusing on my experience as a gay man): being gay does not mean being in a state of misery. As Todd puts it, there are lots of contented, successful gay people, and progress in recent times has been astonishing, including equal marriage. Coming out is like coming up for air for the vast majority of LGBT people: the alternative is so much more miserable. But this is a health crisis that is not spoken about enough: the toxic combination of mental distress, drugs and alcohol abuse.

It is a crisis that is not being dealt with. Despite the government’s promises to grant mental and physical health parity of esteem, last year Mind reported an 8% real terms drop in mental health services funding since 2010. Cuts, according to health thinktank the King’s Fund, have contributed to “widespread evidence of poor-quality care”. Many LGBT services in particular have been devastated: as the TUC pointed out in 2014, they were “already coping on a shoestring. Some have faced drops in up to 50%.”

Because of our internalised shame, LGBT people often find it difficult to talk about the problems we collectively face. The danger is always of reinforcing the damaging stereotypes that have already caused so much distress. But we have to confront a crisis that is damaging health and taking people’s lives. Society has to take responsibility, too: it is its continued refusal to treat LGBT people as equals that is causing so much pain. If Theresa May’s government really does want to prove it isn’t just a pound-shop Ukip tribute band, perhaps it should take this issue seriously and review David Cameron’s cuts. The lives of LGBT people depend on it.

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here

Gay men are battling a demon more powerful than HIV – and it’s hidden| Owen Jones

We should be ashamed of what we’re doing to Britain’s children | Owen Jones

A society should be judged by how it treats its children. A country that fails to invest in its children is imperilling its future. And that’s why we should all be alarmed by the crisis of mental health among Britain’s girls and boys – and the chronic lack of support to overcome it.

Nearly a quarter of a million young people are receiving specialist health care for mental distress, ranging from depression to eating disorders. Disturbingly, it is a crisis that is getting worse: Childline reports a doubling in five years of the number of children contemplating suicide. But the services simply aren’t there to support them. A Guardian poll finds that seven out of 10 specialist nurses believe mental health services for children and adolescents are inadequate, and 43% believe the services are actually getting worse. Overwhelmingly, a lack of nurses and delays in appointments are identified as the main culprits. The price of this failure is our children’s wellbeing – and, more horrifyingly, even their lives.

It is easier to diagnose a crisis than to cure it, of course. Part of the problem is the expectations society places on our children: changing them is necessary, but will not be easy. Research by Girlguiding finds that just 61% of girls and young women aged between seven and 21 are happy with their bodies, a sharp decline from 73% in 2011. That over a third of girls aged between seven and 10 say that they are made to feel their looks were the most important thing, or that 38% felt they were not pretty enough, is chilling. For those aged between 11 and 21, an astonishing 80% felt looks were the most important thing about them. Here are the consequences of a sexist society that imposes impossible standards that even little girls are expected to abide by.

Gender expectations damage boys, too. A rigid and unreconstructed form of masculinity is enforced, sometimes brutally, in the playground. Boys deemed to be insufficiently manly face being abused as “girls” or “gays”. Speaking about mental distress is certainly not seen as “manly” – it is “weak” – and that there are more boys in contact with mental health services is striking.

Yes, we need investment in services. But there must be a remorseless focus on what drives children to mental distress in the first place. Overcrowded and poor housing. Poor diet. Lack of exercise. Family conflict. The stresses of poverty, from internalised shame to being conscious of not having the same opportunities as other children. Consumer capitalism, which judges and defines children by what trainers they wear. An educational culture obsessed with exams. If we want a society that promotes happiness and wellbeing among children, these are all problems that have to be addressed. How tragic, then, that life is being made harder for children by both government policy and ever harsher attitudes and expectations. The children will suffer for it, and so will our country’s future.

We should be ashamed of what we’re doing to Britain’s children | Owen Jones

The evidence of an NHS weekend effect is shaky | Letter from Neena Modi, David Owen, Robert Winston, Stephen Hawking and others

We call on Theresa May to act in the public’s interest and take immediate action over freshly disputed evidence surrounding a “weekend effect”. Department of Health documents leaked to the Guardian and Channel 4 News revealed NHS policy concerns from Jeremy Hunt’s own civil servants. His repeated claim about thousands of patients dying unnecessarily because of poor weekend hospital care “has not been helpful” in justifying new seven-day services. The internal briefing document proposed other means to vindicate his policy, but repeats the assertion that “eight independent studies have set out the evidence for a ‘weekend effect’ – unacceptable variation in care across the week”.

The evidence for these claims is not supported by reliable research. Of the eight “studies” cited by Hunt, only four are independently peer-reviewed, yet peer-review is essential. Three use data from the same population and are not independent, with just two from the last decade. The remainder are not peer-reviewed medical literature, being opinion pieces, the lowest form of clinical evidence. Critically, when his claims began, at least 13 independent, peer-reviewed papers were available to the secretary of state that refute his definition of a weekend effect.

Hunt has cherrypicked research, causing a devastating breakdown of trust between government and the medical profession. In making these claims without faithfully representing the evidence, he has obstructed fact and misled parliament and the public.

We call on Theresa May to commission an independent inquiry into the process behind these policies. It is wrong to waste precious resources, or lives, because of bad evidence. Like NHS treatments, health policy should be evidence-based to demonstrate clinical and cost-effectiveness. Additionally, we call for a pause on any policies or contractual reform driven by this evidence until it can be examined objectively and with rigour.

Dr Taha Nasser
Dr Ben White
Dr Hugo Farne
Dr Antonio De Marvao
Dr Rachel Clarke
Dr Margaret McCartney
Dr Philippa Whitford MP
Dr Phil Hammond Vice-president, Patients’ Association
Professor Alistair Hall Epidemiologist
Professor Trisha Greenhalgh Evidence-based practice
Professor Neena Modi President RCPCH
David Owen House of Lords
Professor Robert Winston House of Lords
Professor Stephen Hawking

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

The evidence of an NHS weekend effect is shaky | Letter from Neena Modi, David Owen, Robert Winston, Stephen Hawking and others

NHS dentistry is in a state of serious decay | Owen Jones

Finally, some outrage about the national scandal that is dentistry. The health of our teeth matters, but dentistry has long been a neglected arm of the NHS. The British Dental Association has just revealed that 600,000 people have made futile appointments with GPs over dental problems in a year, at a cost to the NHS of £26m. It’s a statistic that has provoked mockery – one person tweeted: “I wonder if the 600,000 people a year who go to the GP for dental care ask electricians to fix their roofs as well?” But it is not the patients who should be shamed – it is the government.

As the BDA points out, nearly one in five patients have postponed treatment because of fear of what it might cost. The government has slashed funding for NHS dentistry by £170m since the Tories first entered No 10, and it is expecting patients to make up the shortfall. This year, dental charges were hiked by 5%, and they’re expected to increase by the same amount next year. On the current trajectory, in 16 years’ time most of the NHS dental budget will be funded by patients rather than by central government. But the whole point of the NHS is that it should be free at the point of use, and treatment should be provided according to need, rather than ability to pay.

One in seven children haven’t visited a dentist by their eighth birthday

Even children, who are entitled to free NHS dentistry, are being let down by a system that is unable to provide enough dentists to cope with demand. Earlier this year, more than 400 dentists signed a letter advising that dental health was collapsing to “third world” levels in parts of Britain. “The NHS dental system in England is unfit for purpose,” was their stark warning. So severe is this crisis that more than 62,000 people – mostly children – end up in hospital every year because of tooth decay; half of adults haven’t seen a dentist in a two-year period; and one in seven children haven’t visited a dentist by their eighth birthday.

When dental charges were first introduced in 1951, Nye Bevan – the architect of the NHS – resigned from the government in protest. Sixty-five years on, the service is marred by underinvestment, excessive charges and a lack of NHS dentists. We should aspire to properly publicly funded NHS dentistry, free of rip-off charges. Tragically, we’re headed in the opposite direction. The teeth of lower-income Britons – particularly children – will suffer as a consequence.

NHS dentistry is in a state of serious decay | Owen Jones

Medical professionals who back Owen Smith for the Labour party leadership | Letters

As healthcare professionals we welcome Owen Smith’s bid to lead the Labour party and his commitment to the NHS. The NHS is at a crossroads, and under continued Tory control its future as a world-class, universal healthcare provider, free at the point of use, is at risk.

Owen will invest £60bn more in the NHS than the Tories and is calling for an immediate halt to Tory privatisation and the reversal of their catastrophic reorganisation.

At a time when accident and emergency departments are closing, junior doctors are striking to protect their patients and waiting times are soaring, the need for a Labour government has never been so clear.

Despite savage Tory cuts to public services and the risk of a faltering economy post-Brexit, the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is languishing behind the Conservatives in poll after poll. Owen leads Jeremy among the electorate, with 62% of people thinking he would make a better prime minister compared with Jeremy’s 38% in a recent BMG poll. It is Owen who can form a Labour government and deliver the leadership that the NHS and the country desperately needs.

It doesn’t matter how many thousands of supporters Jeremy addresses at rallies; if he cannot win over the millions of people who once saw Labour as their natural home, then the fate of our public services will be left to the Tories.

A Labour government is an essential step in providing the NHS with the resources and leadership it needs so we can deliver the world-class care that the people of the UK deserve.

Nothing less will do. That’s why we are backing Owen Smith.
Dr Sarah Clark CT2 Medicine, London & Holborn and St Pancras CLP women’s officer
Dr Martin Edobor National chair, Young Fabians
Prof Liz Lightstone Professor of Renal Medicine, London
Dr Daniel McGuinness ST5 Nephrology, London
Mr Keith Seymour Consultant surgeon, Northumberland
Dr Reena Aggarwal ST6 Obstetrics & Gynaecology, London
Dr Ratesh Bajaj ST4 Cardiology, London
Dr David Jones Consultant intensivist and anaesthetist, Merthyr Tydfil
Dr Thomas Oates NIHR clinical lecturer, London
Dr Zoe Kantor Neonatology SHO, London
Lindsay Gordon Community nurse, Reading
Dr Lucy Bradbeer GP ST1, London
Ruth Hodson Theatre scrub nurse, north Wales
Karen Cousins Retired specialist nurse practitioner, Northumberland
Dr Brian Morrissey ST1 Radiology, Aberdeen
Dr Nicola West CT2 Medicine, London
Stephen Naulls Medical student, London & Cleethorpes CLP Youth Officer
Dr Chloe Fairbairns FRCA, anaesthetic registrar, Leeds
Dr Alexander Scott Consultant in anaesthetics and intensive care, West Yorkshire
Jenny Davies Specialist podiatrist, Cardiff
David Davies Occupational therapist, Merthyr Tydfil
Julie Wintrup Occupational therapist, Newbury
Dr Sarah Dickson ST1 ACCS, London
Dr Thomas Halstead GP ST1, West Cambridgeshire
Andy Hill Nurse assessor, Birmingham
Dr John Mullany ST3 Clinical Radiology, Liverpool
Dr Neeraj Singh ST7 Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Eastbourne
Ivana Bartoletti NHS information professional, London
Maria Coleman Renal Nurse, Cardiff
Dr Thomas Fox ST6 Psychiatry, Bromley
Sam Charlton Student nurse, Preston
Dr Lynn Miller Consultant cardiologist, Fife
Dr Lucy Carter Clinical research fellow, Oxford
Nikki Williams Registered nurse, Cottingham
Bryan Neale Retired registered nurse
Alexandros Onoufriadis Research fellow, London
Vasanthi Prathapan Clinical trials manager and research nurse, London
Sharon Jones NIHR BioResource co-ordinator, London
Dr Marc Osterdahl CT2 Medicine, London
Dr Jeff Unsworth ST6 Acute Medicine, Liverpool
Julie Goldie Senior nurse, London
Anna Lynch Quality improvement nurse, London
Dr Michael Northend Haematology registrar, London
Dr Sophie Edwards Care of the elderly consultant, London
Dr Jane Roberts Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, London
Felicia Olney Psychotherapist, London
Dr Sebastian Kraemer Consultant psychiatrist, London
Dr Prathap Pillai Respiratory Medicine, London
Rhanya Chaâbane Clinical trials practitioner, London
Terry Baker Carer, UK
Bridget Langstaff Deputy regional manager, National Treatment Agency, PHE
Dr Justin Shute Psychiatry consultant, London
Paola Di Meglio Senior investigator scientist, Francis Crick Institute, London
Debbie Boyes Former registered nurse, Bridport
Dr Ben Caplin Senior clinical lecturer and honorary consultant, London
Lewis Atkinson Surgery services manager, Tyne & Wear
Monika Temple Retired nurse and DOH civil servant, London
Dr Iain McCullagh Consultant anaesthetist and intensivist, Newcastle
Joanne Barber Newly qualified nurse, Wigan, Wrightington & Leigh
Dr Rachel Stanbrook CT2 Medicine, Leicester
Curtis McLellan Student occupational therapist, Coventry
Gillian Black Retired nurse and former director of community nursing services, Lambeth
Dr David Owen Consultant physician, London
Dr Mike Mclaughlin A&E registrar, London
Dr Andrew Stein Consultant in renal medicine, Coventry & Rugby
Dr Harriet Nerva Core medical trainee, Croydon
Joseph Wright Senior IT manager, London Ambulance Service
Dr Sean Morris GP trainee, London
Laura Drake Health visitor, Bristol
Dr Tim Fallon Consultant ophthalmologist, London
Candida Coghlan Research nurse, International Centre for Circulatory Health, London
Dr Peter Dilworth Retired GP, Liverpool
Dr Harry Costello CT1 Psychiatry, London
Dr Sophie Nocton GP trainee, London
Dr Jane Young Consultant radiologist, London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Medical professionals who back Owen Smith for the Labour party leadership | Letters

Owen Smith promises to protect the NHS – video

Owen Smith, the contender for the Labour leadership, pledges support to National Health Service to promote his campaign on Monday. Speaking from the University of Salford, Smith said a 100% free public health service was an institution to be cherished and criticised Conservative party funding cuts

Owen Smith promises to protect the NHS – video

Owen Smith: Corbyn is exploiting my former work in pharmaceuticals

Labour leadership hopeful Owen Smith has accused Jeremy Corbyn of using his previous career as a lobbyist for the pharmaceuticals industry as “a stick with which to beat me”.

In a speech on the NHS at the University of Salford on Monday, Smith said he was not ashamed to have worked for companies that make medicines to treat conditions such as cancer, diabetes and asthma, and that big pharmaceutical firms provided an important service to the NHS.

“The NHS doesn’t make medicines. It helps with research, but it can’t make medicines,” he said. “It would be physically impossible for the NHS to be able to trial medicines around the world, so of course we will always rely on external forces, companies essentially, to be able to make medicines.”

Related: How much is the government really privatising the NHS?

Smith’s early campaign has been dogged by accusations that he lobbied for further private sector involvement in the NHS during his time working for pharmaceuticals companies Pfizer and Amgen. At the launch of his campaign in July, Jeremy Corbyn said medical research should not be “farmed out” to big companies such as Pfizer, but should be funded through the Medical Research Council.

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, later said that Corbyn’s comments had been misinterpreted, announcing that Labour would seek to reform or scrap a £1bn tax relief designed to promote innovation in companies, including in pharmaceuticals.

Speaking to the Guardian following Monday’s speech, Smith said: “Medicines have always been developed in the private sector and provided to the NHS. It was frankly a bit silly of Jeremy to say that all medicines should be developed in the NHS.

“That’s obviously totally implausible. It would bankrupt the NHS even if it were possible, which of course it isn’t, and he was just using the fact that I’ve worked for big biotech companies as a stick with which to beat me.

“Truthfully, it’s useful to have somebody who understands how big companies operate and it’s completely wrong to suggest that that in any way means I’m in favour of private provision. I’ve never been in favour of it.”

Asked if he had any criticism of his former employers, Smith said: “Yeah, I think medicines should be cheaper, generally. That’s the key criticism I have. I think medicines should be cheaper across the world.”

In his speech, the former shadow work and pensions secretary spoke about the threat of creeping privatisation in the NHS and highlighted Department of Health figures showing that spending on private sector NHS providers had doubled under the Conservatives, from more than £4bn in 2009-10 to £8.7bn in 2015-16. Smith has pledged to increase health spending by 4% a year if he becomes prime minister.

Speaking to an audience of supporters and journalists in Salford, Smith argued that the last Labour government had opened the door for the Tories to introduce an increasing amount of private sector involvement in the health service.

“I do think the last Labour government did use private sector providers in order to clear [waiting lists for] hip operations and knee operations and cataracts, and for those individual patients I think that was a worthwhile thing because we inherited – as we will again – massive waiting lists for those key bits of surgery,” he said.

“The reality is I think we failed to appreciate the way in which the Tories would use those words and use the fact Labour had relied on some private sector provision as a Trojan horse for what they wanted to do, which was to break up, denationalise and privatise the NHS. I think perhaps we were naive about the extent to which they would usurp those themes and subvert them.

“I think we need to be clear in this generation, as I am, that we have red lines and those are that we want this NHS to be publicly owned, publicly delivered – 100% if possible. There will always be some instances, as I said, medicines, that are effectively produced in the private sector and purchased by the NHS, but we should be very, very clear that what we want is something that represents that fundamental Labour belief.”

Owen Smith: Corbyn is exploiting my former work in pharmaceuticals

Owen Smith to target Tories over threat of NHS privatisation

Labour leadership hopeful Owen Smith is to hit out at the threat of creeping privatisation in the NHS, highlighting Department of Health accounts showing that spending on private-sector NHS providers has doubled under the Conservatives.

In a speech on Monday at a campaign trail stop at Trafford General hospital in Manchester, Smith will say that a Labour government led by him would boost health spending by 4% a year, suggesting there is “a secret Tory plan to privatise the NHS”.

Department of Health accounts published on the last day before parliament’s summer recess showed the spend on private-sector NHS providers more than doubled, from more than £4bn in 2009-10 to £8.7bn in 2015-16.

Smith’s early campaign has been dogged by accusations that he lobbied for further private-sector involvement in the NHS during his time as policy chief at the pharmaceuticals companies Pfizer. During his career as a lobbyist for the US firm, Smith had called on ministers to improve incentives for the pharmaceutical industry.

His speech on Monday will attempt to divert attention to his time as shadow health minister, saying that he “fought the Tories’ top-down reorganisation of the NHS line by line”. He will say: “I warned that it would lead to an explosion of privatisation – and that is exactly what has happened.”

Smith, a former shadow work and pensions secretary, has previously claimed it was a gross exaggeration to suggest he had campaigned for more privatisation of NHS services while at Pfizer, and suggested it had been an error for Labour to advocate greater choice over care providers.

He will focus his efforts on health policy a day after Corbyn’s announcement about plans for a national education service based on NHS principles.

Owen Smith to target Tories over threat of NHS privatisation

The NHS must show it cares about gay men’s lives – and roll out PrEP HIV drugs | Owen Jones

The health and lives of gay men matter. That’s what the high court ruled on Tuesday morning. Last year, NHS England decided against rolling out a treatment called PrEP – which prevents the transmission of HIV. The wellbeing of gay men was overriden by other priorities. Given it costs substantially more money to treat HIV than to prevent it, even financial considerations weren’t a good reason.

Related: NHS can fund ‘game-changing’ PrEP HIV drug, court says

On Tuesday, NHS England was defeated in court and told it was responsible for funding the treatment, and that they have a “preventative role and power to commission preventative function”. Pressure must now be placed on the NHS to start rolling this drug out immediately. As the British Medical Journal pointed out, “delays by NHS England will cost lives”.

If you want to stop HIV spreading, then PrEP is one among many solutions. It works. As studies in the United States have shown, if taken every day, it has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection in high-risk individuals by up to 92%. The objections to PrEP, in truth, are based on moral objections. If you do not want the risk of HIV, goes the argument, then wear a condom. Those who get HIV are, by implication, morally condemned for bringing it on themselves.

Of course, safer sex messages must always emphasise the importance of condoms: after all, they protect against many other STIs. But – in the real world, rather than the non-existent world of the morally self-righteous – things are more complicated. People get carried away; people get drunk (yes, in the real world imperfect people sometimes drink more than the recommended daily amount); condoms break. The same moralising is used against the right of women to have control over their own bodies, whether it be the right to abortion or even the morning-after pill. The standards set by the “morally pure” cause harm – or even kill.

We have come so far with the treatment of HIV, once a disease that ravaged the gay world. But according to the Terence Higgins Trust, there are 45,000 men who have sex with men living with HIV; and thousands of them do not know they even have it. The annual rate of newly infected men in 2014 was higher than the decade before. If you genuinely want to send HIV infection rates hurtling into reverse, then PrEP is not the only solution – but it is a good one.

Gay people, their health and their lives, matter. That’s a court judgment. NHS England must now accept the defeat – and start doing its job: protecting health and saving lives.

The NHS must show it cares about gay men’s lives – and roll out PrEP HIV drugs | Owen Jones

A £10 charge to visit a GP would be just the commence of a slippery slope for the NHS | Owen Jones

A GP with a patient. ‘This ideological assault is being accompanied by an actual try to dismantle and privatise the NHS.’ Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

A slow hand clap for Andy McGovern, a London hospital nurse who has proposed that the Royal School of Nursing support a £10 charge to check out a GP. On its very own terms, the proposal is an unacceptable assault on the very foundations of the NHS: that it is free at the level of use. But the suggestion is so menacing due to the fact of where it originates from. The a lot of enemies of the NHS – who have to be diplomatic, understanding that the NHS “is the closest the English have to a religion”, as Nigel Lawson after put it – will rejoice. “Aha!” they will believe. “Now even the nurses are debating NHS costs, we have been offered the political cover we require!”

That the NHS has just been declared the world’s greatest healthcare method by the Washington-primarily based Commonwealth Fund should be a matter of national pride. But the institution is in mortal danger. The totally free industry crusaders who 1st took power in the late 1970s have extended regarded NHS as an aberration. It is an irritating example of a service run on the basis of social need, rather than private profit – and, even worse, it is loved for it. As lengthy as it exists, it serves as a defiant reminder that there is an substitute to the neoliberal undertaking.

No wonder it is below constant assault. Nick Seddon is the former deputy director of rightwing thinktank Reform before that, he was head of communications at Circle Partnerships, which boasts of becoming “Europe’s largest healthcare partnership”. Reform is an outfit funded by personal healthcare firms such as Bupa Healthcare, the Basic Healthcare Group and BMI Healthcare. Seddon has backed charging to see a GP, NHS budget cuts and the sacking of frontline workers. Last year, he became David Cameron’s well being adviser.

Then there is Lord Warner, a Labour peer who in March published a report with Reform calling for a £10-a-month NHS membership charge. What he didn’t mention was that he performs for personal businesses that rely on the NHS.

Even in this newspaper, Simon Jenkins and Ian Birrell have been floating tips to dismantle and privatise the NHS. And then there is Ukip, that famed anti-establishment get together whose financial policies are largely about cutting taxes for members of the establishment and handing them public assets. Paul Nuttall, Ukip’s deputy leader, has declared “that the extremely existence of the NHS stifles competition”, claiming that the “as extended as the NHS is the ‘sacred cow’ of British politics, the longer the British folks will suffer with a second rate well being services”. Read through the Commonwealth Fund report and weep into your Milton Friedman textbook, Mr Nuttall.

This ideological assault is being accompanied by an real attempt to dismantle and privatise the NHS. I’m not going to insult people’s intelligence by pretending that the final Labour government was some socialist utopia: it also promoted a private sector agenda, including personal finance initiatives which saddled hospitals with lengthy-term debt. But which is nothing at all in contrast to this government’s Well being and Social Care Act. Again, realizing the acceptance of the NHS, the government did not have the guts to place what it was going to do to the British public, and promised no further “best-down reorganisations”. Panic stations should have been manned just before the general election, when it was revealed that the personal workplace of Andrew Lansley, who would turn out to be Tory health secretary, had been bankrolled by the former chairman of Care United kingdom to the tune of £21,000. And lo, beneath Part 75 of this government’s legislation, the NHS is driven to place its services out to competitive tender. In Surrey, community overall health services were handed to Virgin Care in 2012 final 12 months, NHS outsourcing well worth £1.1bn was announced in Cambridge and Peterborough. And so on.

On top of all of that, the government is implementing the most protracted squeeze on NHS spending since its basis throw in the government’s savage cuts to regional authority spending – which is placing pressure on the NHS as solutions like social care are hit – and get into account our ageing population, and a serious crisis without a doubt is on its way.

And so it’s up to us. We can let our NHS be trashed by the privatisers and cutters, the private overall health organizations and their assortment of outriders and valuable idiots. We can surrender the principle of a support cost-free at the stage of use. We can move towards the grotesquely inefficient and unjust US technique we have long ridiculed. Or we can defend a correctly funded, publicly run, universal technique that is cost-free at the stage of use. It’s make our thoughts up time.

A £10 charge to visit a GP would be just the commence of a slippery slope for the NHS | Owen Jones

A big, juicy burger to anyone who is aware of what healthier eating is any longer | Owen Jones

Salad in a bowl. wel Photograph: Alamy

As somebody who once ate a bag of Mini Eggs for breakfast, I am in no place to champion a crusade against the evils of confectionery. But Tesco’s determination to eject sweets from their pride-of-location at checkouts is challenging not to applaud (although I’ll spare the standing ovation until finally it commences paying a living wage).

There is a lengthy-established consensus that obesity is 1 of the defining – and developing – well being crises of our age. It kills men and women, ruins people’s wellbeing, and charges massive sums to deal with. Youngster obesity in Britain is the highest in western Europe, and in between 2000 and 2009 the quantity of young people admitted to hospital with weight problems-connected conditions more than quadrupled. It charges the NHS £4.2bn to treat each 12 months.

The problem is this. Whilst we’re all agreed that scoffing sweets is a fool-proof means of trashing your overall health, I am now lost as to what constitutes a wholesome diet and lifestyle. Growing up it was easy: avoid consuming body fat if you will not, well, want to turn out to be body fat. As a teenager, I would down bottles of Frijj chocolate milkshake on the basis it was advertised as a “low-excess fat” drink. I have extended depended on Red Bulls to energy me through deadlines, but was just lately horrified to find out a 473ml can of the things includes no significantly less than 13 teaspoons of sugar. It does not just give you wings, but a belly, as well.

Now it truly is no longer fat that is public enemy number 1: it’s sugar. Not least due to the fact it hides in rather much every thing and is supremely addictive.

But then is will get difficult. The official recommendation is to consume at least five portions of fruit and veggies a day: then a University University London basis suggested that consuming at least seven would save lives. That’s a quite lofty ambition: in excess of the final couple of years, we have actually becoming consuming much less fruit and veg. The wellness benefits are clear: they incorporate tons of fibre (which also makes you come to feel total) and anti-oxidants, and decrease your chance of nasty diseases this kind of as a variety of cancers and heart ailment. But then there is the anti-fructose lobby, led by the likes of Dr Robert Lustig the Every day Mail, probably more predictably, has suggested also a lot fruit makes you fat. Others recommend extreme fruit consumption leads to every thing from dental decay to thinning hair. Oh boy!

The truth is you would have to eat a great deal of fruit to significantly injury your well being: even though staying away from fruit juices is a great move, since they are jam-packed with sugar. But the tips has been critically muddied because of the anti-sugar backlash. Then there’s carbohydrates: their reputation is all over the area, and we’re supposed to learn how to distinguish in between “very good” carbs and “undesirable” carbs.

Diets are even now routinely promoted, even even though there is a growing consensus that they are unhealthy, and lead only to temporary and unsustainable bodyweight reduction, demoralising any individual who tries them. But now even physical exercise for bodyweight loss is under fire: apparently if you go the fitness center, you just consume a lot more to reward oneself, cancelling out the effects. We’ve all done it: had a run and then tucked into a good huge burger, feeling guilt-free of charge.

Just to make it even a lot more complicated, we’re subjected to a continuous diet of unrealistic physique images – damaging our self-esteem (particularly amid ladies), but also driving us to lifestyles that are entirely counterproductive and damaging to our health. There is the environment to contemplate, too: and the world’s growing consumption of meat is driving up greenhouse gas emissions, as properly as meals charges.

What a complete mess. Removing sweets from the front of Tesco is a excellent symbolic gesture when it comes to selling wholesome lifestyles. But what we all need to have is a clear manual to what a healthier diet plan and life style would look like. At the second, we’re getting fed perplexing and contradictory statements. No wonder, then, that public awareness of the need to be wholesome – in an abstract sense – is better than it has ever been, and yet obesity is hurtling north. Unless of course the message is drastically simplified, our overall health is going to hold getting worse.

A big, juicy burger to anyone who is aware of what healthier eating is any longer | Owen Jones