Don’t dread old age. I’m 94, and I won’t spend my last years in fear of the Tories | Harry Leslie Smith

I have lived a very long time. Tomorrow, it will be exactly 94 years ago that a midwife with a love of harsh gin and rolled cigarettes delivered me into my mother’s tired, working-class arms. Neither the midwife nor my mother would have expected me to live to almost 100 because my ancestors had lived in poverty for as long as there was recorded history in Yorkshire.

Nowadays, when wealth is considered wisdom, too often old age is derided, disrespected or feared, perhaps because it is the last stage in our human journey before death. But in this era of Trump and Brexit, ignoring the assets of knowledge that are acquired over a long life could be as lethal as disregarding a dead canary in a coal mine.

I have been living on borrowed time since my birth in Barnsley all those years ago: I survived both the depression and the second world war. Even in advanced old age, because I walked free of those two events, I feel like a man who beat all the odds in a high-stakes casino. It’s why I’ve embraced each season of my life with both joy and wonderment because I know our time on Earth is a brief interlude between nonexistence.

Still, many people persist in thinking that old age is the end of one’s usefulness or purpose, which could explain why the news that women in South Korea can expect to live into their 90s has been badly received. Some fear the indignity that old age may bring, or the dependence it may cause because of physical or mental impairment. On occasion I too worry that before death sets in on me that it may rob me of the elements that make me who I am. But ultimately, having experienced the profound indignity of extreme poverty during the 1930s and the sheer terror of war in the 1940s, I know that life must be battled until the bitter end.

Eternity is just around the corner for me but I don’t fear my death. I only regret that death will end my dance to the music of time, no matter how slow the waltz has become to allow me keep up. I know that my physical wellbeing and dignity may yet be affected adversely by the government’s self-created social care crisis but I will not spend either my last years or days living in fear of the Tories. I cannot because I have seen their kind before in the 1930s and 1980s and know that the only way we can beat the tyranny of austerity is through our own personal defiance.

People should not look at their approaching golden years with dread or apprehension but as perhaps one of the most significant stages in their development as a human being, even during these turbulent times. For me, old age has been a renaissance despite the tragedies of losing my beloved wife and son. It’s why the greatest error anyone can make is to assume that, because an elderly person is in a wheelchair or speaks with quiet deliberation, they have nothing important to contribute to society. It is equally important to not say to yourself if you are in the bloom of youth: “I’d rather be dead than live like that.” As long as there is sentience and an ability to be loved and show love, there is purpose to existence.

I learned a long ago time ago that there was wisdom and beauty that could be mined from the memories of those in the sunset of life. It is why as a boy I listened in rapt attention to my granddad as he lay dying from cancer and told me about his life both as soldier and miner during the reign of Queen Victoria.

All of you, when young, will make your own history: you will struggle, you will betray some and others will betray you. You will love and lose love. You will feel profound joy and deep sorrow and during all of this you will grow as an individual. That’s why it is your duty when you get old to tell the young about your odyssey across the vast ocean of your life. It is why when death does come for me – even if it mauls me with decrepitude before it takes me – I will not lament either my old age or my faded youth. They were just different times of the day when I stood in the sun and felt the warmth of life.

Don’t dread old age. I’m 94, and I won’t spend my last years in fear of the Tories | Harry Leslie Smith

By ignoring sex education, ministers are risking children’s safety | Joan Smith

It’s a long time since Theresa May and most of her cabinet were at school. When she was doing her O-levels, no one was sexting and teenage boys weren’t goggling at violent porn on smartphones. I think it’s unlikely that the future prime minister had to wear shorts under her school skirt to protect herself from being groped, as some teenage girls have taken to doing. But that doesn’t mean May and her colleagues have any excuse for ignoring what’s going on in schools today, from sexual harassment to homophobic bullying.

They’ve been warned by MPs on the women and equalities committee, in an excoriating report that revealed the “shocking scale” of sexual harassment in schools. They’ve been told by the campaigning organisation Stonewall, which published a survey three years ago in which 86% of secondary teachers said they had encountered bullying of gay pupils. They follow the news, like the rest of us, and they must know about dreadful cases in which girls and boys have been tricked into meeting paedophiles who disguised themselves as teenagers online.

They have also been told by just about everyone that the best way to keep children safe is to insist that every school in the country teaches high-quality sex and relationships education (SRE) and the broader subject of personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education – no ifs, no buts, and no exemptions for faith schools. Teachers’ or parents’ embarrassment is not a reason to deny children absolutely essential information about how to avoid sexual predators, online or in real life.

After the “grooming” scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and other cities, you might think this was a no-brainer. Yet ministers have done everything but stand on their heads to avoid it. Last week Conservatives in the House of Commons were accused of filibustering a bill sponsored by Green co-leader Caroline Lucas, calling for PSHE to be made compulsory in all state-funded schools, by making lengthy speeches about the bill that preceded it. A change in the law isn’t necessary, ministers have claimed, because Ofsted is checking that the subject is being covered and will pick up any inadequacies during inspections. Just over a year ago a Home Office minister, Lord Bates, said: “We expect sex and relationships education to be taught in all schools. In fact, it is inspected by Ofsted as such.” A similar point was made last year by Lady Evans, then a government whip and now leader of the House of Lords.

Presumably they had in mind Ofsted’s latest inspection framework, introduced in 2015, which made considering the effectiveness of PSHE “more crucial than ever” to the judgments made by inspectors. Now, though, that argument (like all previous ones) has been blown out of the water. It turns out that Ofsted is barely looking at SRE when it inspects schools, according to a detailed analysis by the British Humanist Association.

The headline finding, from a study of more than 2,000 primary and secondary school inspection reports for 2015-16, is that sexual health, safe sex and related subjects were almost entirely absent. Sexual harassment and sexual violence were not mentioned at all, while sexting appeared in just 17 reports, despite having been identified as an area of major concern by the government. Porn was mentioned in a single report, as was HIV/Aids, which appeared in relation to “emerging economies” in a geography lesson. Only one in seven reports referred to LGBT issues.

Back in 2013, Ofsted said that the provision of PSHE was “not yet good enough” in 40% of schools. It is hard to believe there has been a massive improvement in the meantime, yet fewer than 1% of the inspection reports examined by the BHA made any criticism of schools’ coverage of the subject. To be fair to Ofsted, it should never have been given the job of making up for the government’s failure in this area. If SRE isn’t compulsory, some schools will say they don’t want to divert scarce resources from other subjects or that they can’t find room in the timetable. Others will use it as an excuse to avoid topics, such as homosexuality and safe sex, that they find uncomfortable for religious or ideological reasons.

What all this means, in blunt terms, is that the government is coming up with one excuse after another to avoid doing one of its most basic jobs: protecting the next generation. We know girls are being sexually harassed at school, pressured into posing for photos that may be used to threaten or humiliate them, and suffering abuse from boyfriends whose expectations have been warped by online porn. We know that gay kids are being bullied, and children of both sexes are vulnerable to predatory sex offenders.

For several years now, senior police officers in London have been telling me that compulsory sex education is vital to keep children safe. A few months ago, I heard a senior civil servant talk about the staggering number of crimes against children that are being facilitated by the internet. This is not the cosy world May grew up in, when sex and reproduction were covered in biology lessons and mobile phones didn’t exist.

It is not even the world of 17 years ago, when the government published its outdated official guidance on SRE. Children are encountering sex at a much younger age than in earlier generations, but a head-in-the-sand government is refusing to make sure they are well-informed and safe.

By ignoring sex education, ministers are risking children’s safety | Joan Smith

I have seen Britain shrouded in darkness before. Better times will come | Harry Leslie Smith

Hope is hard to find in the grey teatime light of this December, because despite all of the holiday cheer around us, darkness gathers. It has been the hardest, saddest and cruellest of years – a sour vintage which has brought to everyone’s doorstep heartache, financial worries and political unease.

Austerity seems eternal, and for many it is as if they are living within a new circle added to Dante’s inferno for the 21st century. Callous and barbarous wars in Yemen and Syria test our faith in humanity, while the unstoppable refugee crisis it produced makes us want to weep in despair for the decrepitude of our civilisation.

Hope is as absent from society today as cash is to a pauper’s wallet because a noxious populism fuelled by hate now smoulders. Everywhere we turn it feels like optimism has been eclipsed by a world we don’t want to recognise as our own. Despair is in the breath of our words because we are frightened.

But as my life has been long, I have seen Britain up against the setting sun of history before. I witnessed our country on its knees from the Great Depression; with its back to the wall and under threat of invasion by the Nazis. Over my nine decades of life, I’ve known despair but never hopelessness.

My hope for a better tomorrow for everyone in our country doesn’t come from our military victories against fascism. It doesn’t come from Churchill’s defiance or the words of present-day politicians. No: the source of hope that has carried me through decades of existence comes from the collective will of my generation in 1945 to beat our swords into ploughshares and harvest a just society through the erection of the welfare state.

My hope has always come from the humanity, kindness and intelligence that inhabits the majority of people who reside on our shores. It may seem dormant now, but it will rise again because those sparks of decency that built the NHS, gave affordable housing to each and every one of us, and provided free education to all, are in each Briton alive today – because you are the children and the grandchildren of my generation. If we did it before, then we can do it again.

The 1945 general election was called after our long and brutal war with Germany. It would decide whether our country would cling to its feudal past or accept a bold egalitarian future. I was 22, a member of the allied occupation force and stationed in Hamburg. And it was there that I cast my ballot for the first time – and it’s been a love affair with democracy ever since.

On the day I voted in that occupied city, which looked more worse for wear than Aleppo does now, sorrow could be found on every street corner because of a dead tyrant’s madness. While I queued to vote, I remember how conscious I was of both what I had endured as a boy and teenager during the Great Depression and what I’d witnessed during the war. I felt by making my mark and voting for a welfare state, I was declaring to my country, my peers and those that did not live to see that election day, that my destiny mattered regardless of my humble station in life. The hope that has kept me going all these years came from that election, when ordinary people said their lives mattered just as much as any elite class.

I have seen Britain shrouded in darkness before. Better times will come | Harry Leslie Smith

I remember the welfare state being built. A divided Labour cannot save it | Harry Leslie Smith

As the date for the Labour conference grows closer, like dark clouds gathering on the horizon, my thoughts are focused on the social and economic injustices from our nation’s history that helped form this party’s progressive political ideology.

Come this October it will be 90 years since my eldest sister Marion was buried in a pauper’s pit on the outskirts of Barnsley. Not a day has gone by in the intervening decades when I have not thought of her miserable death from TB in a workhouse infirmary, or her ignoble burial in a mass grave for indigents because my parents, being from the working class, were too poor to afford my sister a doctor’s care.

My sister’s tragic end came at a time when Britain was ruled by a Tory government that had unleashed austerity on the citizens of Britain. Her death, and the misery I endured from poverty in the 1930s, were caused by government indifference to the plight of working-class Britain – and that politicised me to become a pragmatic socialist. I learned during the Great Depression that there can be no middle road to social or economic justice when my family, along with millions of other British citizens, were forced to live in substandard housing or slums because the government didn’t adequately tax its most affluent citizens and corporations.

Labour must end its eternal battle between its heart and its head. Both are necessary for electoral victory

It’s why since 1945 my political ideology has been fixed in orbit around the Labour party’s commitment to social democracy. So, when I was invited to speak at the Labour conference in 2014 about what life was like in Britain before the NHS, I was honoured. I was also gratified that I was finally able to give the speech I had waited a lifetime to give about the iniquities ordinary people endure if there is no social safety network to protect them.

Since then, I have spoken all across Britain to small and large crowds about how my generation struggled to build a welfare state, and how that became a tide which raised all boats from the miseries of unharnessed capitalism. But my talks were not so much about my past as about everyone else’s future, and how the younger generations must now shoulder the responsibility to maintain and preserve my generation’s legacy, the welfare state.

But for the young to make a difference and reverse years of neoliberalism that have fragmented this society and ossified their ability to prosper, the left must unite for one purpose: to defeat conservative politics that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Those of social conscience who want a nation based upon egalitarian ideals can only accomplish this if the Labour party ends its eternal battle between its heart and its head. Both are necessary for electoral victory. The warring factions in Labour must unite in a grand alliance that includes the PLP and its 500,000 enthusiastic members, as well as the millions of voters all across these islands who want a new deal.

Make no mistake: I am a fervent supporter of Jeremy Corbyn but I will not forget or ignore how I came to speak at that Labour conference in 2014. I will always be grateful to Andy Burnham, along with Ed Miliband and his office of dedicated staffers, who asked me to speak about healthcare because they believed in an NHS that is for the people and not for the benefit of hedge funds. It’s why, having met many of the members of the PLP over the past two years in every nook and cranny of this country, I can attest to their professionalism and their dedication to social justice. But in their anguish after Brexit, I believe the PLP members erred when they tried to oust a leader who had been elected less than a year earlier. I understand their frustrations just as well as those party members who are now angry at the PLP. I can see the merits to both sides in this acrimonious battle.

That’s why this year’s conference in Liverpool will be more important than even one held right before a general election. The speeches will be a window for the British electorate to see whether Labour can tell the human stories that win elections, rather than just settling old scores.

So, for those members given the great honour of addressing conference delegates – whether they support Corbyn or Owen Smith – they must remember that history is watching them and measure their words accordingly. This is not the time nor the place for the politics of revenge, but instead a time for amity. This is the time for Labour to reaffirm its commitment to forming the next government and building a compassionate Britain, where all are welcomed. The only way to do that is to get our own house in order.

I remember the welfare state being built. A divided Labour cannot save it | Harry Leslie Smith

Alwyn Smith obituary

“The health of our nation is like a race. It is one in which the rich have been able to run faster than the poor.” Such was the clarity provided on issues of poverty and health by the doctor and academic Alwyn Smith, who has died aged 89. Alwyn played a major role in shaping public health policy and practice during the last part of the 20th century. His work improved take-up of breast cancer and cervical screening. He was elected president of the Faculty of Public Health in 1981 and again in 1984, the only president to be elected twice.

At the summit of his influence he led an authoritative assessment of the nation’s health, commissioned by the King’s Fund independent thinktank, published in 1988. Its recommendations for action focused squarely on government and public authorities, challenging the Thatcherite dogma of individual responsibility alone. The report, The Nation’s Health, became a bestseller and was the subject of fierce political and public debate. The pendulum swung decisively when John Major’s administration came to power after Margaret Thatcher’s fall in 1990. The health white paper of 1992, which carried the prime minister’s full printed endorsement, led to detailed strategies over the next decade, continued by the Labour governments, modelled on the approach outlined in the report for improving general health and reducing inequalities.

Born in Walsall, Staffordshire, the eldest of four children of Ernest, an engineer, and Constance (nee Webster), a teacher, Alwyn was educated at Queen Mary’s grammar school in Walsall. He was awarded an exhibition to New College, Oxford, to study history. During the second world war, he joined the Royal Marines, and, as a 19-year-old second lieutenant, commanded a platoon on active service in Belgium, Holland and Germany.

After demobilisation and a stiff conversation with his father, he decided to study medicine at the University of Birmingham. As a student he developed such a talent for debating that Richard Crossman suggested he enter politics. His skills as a public speaker served him well, and arguably enabled him to influence public policy more as a doctor than as an MP.

His future was sealed when, as a medical student, he was inspired by the teachings of Thomas McKeown, who was one of the first professors of social medicine, then a new discipline which brought together an understanding of the patterns and societal causes of disease in populations, and the evaluation of services intended to improve health.

After gaining a diploma in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he began his academic career with a WHO-supported lectureship in Singapore, and then posts in Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. In Edinburgh he combined an academic post with that of medical statistician to the registrar general for Scotland. In Glasgow he founded the Social Paediatric Research Group and seized the opportunities presented by the city council’s new IBM computer to create a congenital malformations register. This provided the basis for research into the re-emergence of rickets in the city as well as becoming a key part of a European research collaboration.

Alwyn was appointed professor of social and preventive medicine at Manchester University in 1967, and swiftly established a centre of educational excellence. In 1968 he published The Science of Social Medicine, in which he laid out the subject’s principles and methodology. For example, he showed that, although there had been reductions in perinatal mortality (stillbirths and deaths in the first week of life) in Scotland over the previous 25 years, the differences between social classes persisted. If all Scottish births experienced the same death rates of the highest social class, he observed that a further 1,500 young lives would be saved each year. He concluded this “would represent a total saving of years of human life comparable with that which would be achieved by the abolition of deaths from cancer.”

His peers marvelled at his erudite lectures, thought out during weekend walks and delivered to time without notes or visual aids. He introduced a multidisciplinary MSc course, soon complemented by one providing education for the public health doctors appointed following the 1974 NHS reorganisation.

In 1977 he was appointed to the Manchester chair of epidemiology and social oncology, a name he chose to signal his determination to bring social medicine into the clinicians’ domain of cancer. Once again he brought together researchers from a range of disciplines. His team achieved a substantial increase in the uptake of cervical screening, especially among poorer women, by using a call and recall system. This was adopted by the national screening programmes for breast and cervical screening, which continue to use this approach today.

When Alwyn became president of the Faculty of Public Health – which is responsible for training and standards in the public health workforce – he inherited a membership that was demoralised, following NHS restructuring in 1974, and which was “doctors only”. There had been a longstanding divide between doctors and non-medical public health workers. Alwyn’s leadership paved the way to opening up the faculty’s training programmes and membership to other disciplines – economists, social scientists, statisticians and other scientists.

Early in Alwyn’s presidency, the faculty was invited by the Department of Health to produce guidance on healthcare planning for nuclear war. The membership was bitterly divided between those who thought this was acceptable and those who thought such planning was a dangerous nonsense. In the event, Alwyn was able to steer both factions into agreeing a document that provided planning guidance at the same time as a call for the prevention of nuclear war.

The example he set by engaging politically to tackle the societal causes of disease was enthusiastically adopted by multidisciplinary colleagues and students alike. He was appointed CBE in 1986.

He remained a passionate advocate of the NHS, and after his retirement in 1990 he chaired the former Lancaster health authority. He was a keen musician, photographer and sailor, and had a love for powerful cars, buying a Porsche in his 90th year.

His wife, Doreen (nee Preston), whom he met at university and married in 1950, died in 2012; Alwyn is survived by their children, Jeremy and Wendy, a granddaughter, Annie, and his sister, Valerie, and brother, Roger.

• Alwyn Smith, public health doctor, born 9 November 1926; died 15 July 2016

Alwyn Smith obituary

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

Jackie Smith critiques the week"s healthcare news

Unfavorable press “can dent our faith but we need to don’t forget that our NHS was just lately voted greatest in the globe”, writes Jackie Smith. Photograph: David Levenson/Alamy

The release of figures from the Well being and Social Care Details Centre, as reported in the Telegraph, showed that one particular in 4 elderly or disabled men and women come to feel lonely or that they have couple of social contacts. This tends to make for very unhappy reading through without a doubt. However what this says to me, as the chief executive and registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), is how essential it is to make sure that individuals entrusted with offering care to the most vulnerable in our society demonstrate compassion to their sufferers. One of the fundamental concepts of the NMC is that nurses and midwives need to deal with folks kindly, respectfully and compassionately. If we all take this on board and give a tiny of our time to those much less ready to type the support networks a lot of of us get for granted, the globe would definitely be a tiny kinder.

The BBC reported on a survey published by Which? saying that a lot more work even now requirements to be accomplished in healthcare when it comes to handling complaints. The survey discovered that 43% of individuals who had manufactured a complaint inside of the NHS have been dissatisfied with the outcome. The NMC receives more than four,000 complaints about nurses and midwives each and every year and we have place strategies in motion that aim to enhance the method for everybody concerned. This includes generating positive that the information on our website plainly explains the position of the NMC in relation to complaints, reducing the time it requires for us to manage complaints, and signposting to other organisations that may be capable to assist. Interestingly, it seems Dr Dan Poulter has also had the exact same concept and announced, whilst giving proof to the Well being Pick Committee, that individuals will soon be acquiring a bedside guide to creating complaints. Poulter mentioned that the guide “aims to better support patients to understand and navigate the method in a considerably easier way”.

These accounts can dent our faith but we should remember that our NHS was lately voted very best in the world by an American based research. Luke Akehurst’s site for the Guardian on why he loves the NHS reminded me of why. Whilst the technique is in require of improvement it continues to be the envy of the planet. For me the main reason that the NHS is some thing to be proud of is due to the fact it is cost-free for all – rich or bad, black or white it does not discriminate against anyone. It supplies a security blanket for each single resident in the Uk. I think it is important for all of us to take stock and keep in mind that though our wellness pages are usually clogged up with the factors that have gone incorrect in the NHS, as Luke Akenhurst factors out, it saves lives on a everyday basis, and although the NMC receives four,000 complaints a yr about nurses and midwives, that is only .6% of individuals on our register.

I was extremely interested to study Lord Stevenson’s website for the BBC about the troubles he experienced when talking about his depression. In my see, we all need to be braver and begin speaking much more about psychological health. That is why, when I ran the London Marathon earlier this year, I chose to donate my sponsorship to the Samaritans. Their ‘no judgement’ approach can be a genuine lifeline to those who really feel they have nowhere else to flip.

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Jackie Smith critiques the week"s healthcare news

Iain Duncan Smith says I am dependent. But my benefits are a lifeline, not a trap

‘Dependency sounds like people are addicted to rewards. If that is the prevailing perspective, then no wonder people who need to have help come to feel picked on and ashamed.’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Iain Duncan Smith’s speech last week on jobseekers possessing to search for perform just before they can sign on, talked about “dependency” 14 occasions. He didn’t mention individuals created redundant, or staying at house to care for loved ones or, like me, who are also sick to operate. I uncover that deeply disturbing and I compose in the hope that the operate and pensions secretary thinks about the consequences of what he says and changes how he speaks in the potential.

I’m 52 and live in Newcastle with my wife and two young children. Six many years in the past I was diagnosed with a uncommon and incurable form of leukaemia (cancer of the blood). My objective is to live long sufficient to see my young children grow up.

I left college at sixteen and have worked all my life due to the fact that is all I wished to do. I come from a loved ones which was hardworking and was brought up to understand that you got a task and worked all your existence. I’ve worked in retail, the motor business, in insurance coverage and, for 12 years I worked at the Department for Operate and Pensions. It truly is been a good daily life. Not rich, not bad, but I’ve loved every little thing we have worked hard for.

For 4 years right after my diagnosis, I worked complete time but I was extremely tired, in ache and choosing up every cold and flu going due to the fact of my weakened immune technique. I retired due to ill health at the finish of 2012 and given that then have claimed the advantages I am entitled to and that I have contributed to all my existence so that we can proceed to pay the mortgage loan and place food on the table.

You could say that me and my family are dependent on rewards. In the exact same way we had been dependent on my salary and we are still dependent on my pension and the income my wife earns. Unless of course we are born rich, we all depend on the funds coming in every single month. But Iain Duncan Smith makes use of dependent in a way I reject. Dependency sounds like folks are addicted to positive aspects. If which is the prevailing attitude, then no wonder folks who need to have help come to feel picked on and ashamed.

I’m not unusual. Other folks who have had help from benefits have essential that assist because they were operating in reduced-paid jobs, looking for work or, like me, unable to function. Perhaps we are an inconvenient reminder that becoming unable to pay the expenses with no aid is not a straightforward moral failing – it truly is anything that so several of us are only a diagnosis or a redundancy letter away from. If I can not persuade men and women in electrical power to stop speaking about dependency, possibly they would agree that, for each and every time they do, they match it with a reference to the millions of us for whom help from rewards is a lifeline, not a trap.

Iain Duncan Smith says I am dependent. But my benefits are a lifeline, not a trap

Spending much more time in the dark could improve hearing in old age | Dana Smith

If one area of our brain is broken, other neurons will typically get above to select up the slack. Scientists have located the brain retains this ‘plasticity’ even in old age. Photograph: Alamy

In the Marvel Comic Daredevil our eponymous hero is the victim of a radioactive spill, leaving him blind but also with an extraordinary heightening of his other senses, especially hearing.

For Julie, her superhuman hearing isn’t the result of radioactivity, but is rather due to the reorganisation of neurons in her brain, enhancing her sense of hearing right after the reduction of her sight at the age of sixteen.

The cells in our brain are plastic, not static, which means they can adapt and increase in accordance to our experiences. So if 1 region of your brain is damaged, disrupting a particular approach, other neurons in neighbouring regions will frequently get more than, increasing new projections or strengthening current ones to select up the slack. This has been most significantly shown in young children who have an entire hemisphere of their brain removed, generally to deal with excessive situations of epilepsy. Miraculously, these kids develop up to perform practically entirely typically – strolling, working, talking and thinking – going through school and even on to university as if absolutely nothing have been out of the ordinary.

Co-ordinated reorganisation among our auditory and visual areas is particularly effective, and it is this type of cross-sensory plasticity that has led to tales of enhanced hearing and even extraordinary musical ability in folks who are blind (Stevie Wonder, for instance), the auditory pathway compensating for disability in the visual circuit.

Now, new analysis has shown that this cellular sensory adaptation can take place with temporary disability in outdated age, suggesting our cells are even far more malleable than previously considered, and opening the door for possible non-invasive therapies for hearing loss.

Published in Neuron this month, US scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the University of Maryland identified evidence of enhanced auditory capacity and cell firing in mice that had been subjected to visual sensory deprivation for a week. Very first, the researchers locked the mice in a darkened chamber for six to eight days. Following re-exposing them to light, the researchers played the mice a series of tones, evaluating their responses to these of a group of manage mice that had merely been hanging out in their cages throughout this time.

Though probably unpleasant, the time in the visual sensory deprivation chamber apparently did the mice some very good, at least as far as their hearing was concerned. Those that had been “blinded” for a week showed greater action in response to the tones in neurons in the auditory cortex that originated in the thalamus, a kind of way-station in the brain that processes sensory information and therefore may possibly support integrate responses from both our eyes and our ears.

The cells fired more strongly and quicker, demonstrating that the auditory cells in the blinded group had been much more sensitive to the noise than the same cells in the normal group. The visually deprived mice have been also greater at detecting quieter tones. In addition, these super-hearing mice have been greater at discriminating among different varieties of tones, meaning their perception of pitch was also improved.

Importantly, this analysis was carried out in adult mice, exhibiting that this sensory reorganisation can still happen in older animals. Previously, researchers considered that neural plasticity in these thalamo-cortical cells was only available while our brains have been nonetheless building. Emily Petrus, a graduate pupil at Johns Hopkins University who was first writer on the paper, informed me: “Most people considered these synapses stopped shifting soon after a crucial age, but we show that cross-modally you do nonetheless see a adjust. These findings go towards the dogma that this element of the brain is aplastic [unchanging].”

In other phrases, there is hope for translating these findings into new treatment options for ageing grownups going through hearing loss. Although locking individuals in a dark room for a week most likely isn’t a possible treatment now, shorter spells of sensory deprivation could attain the same results. In reality, past analysis suggests that getting blindfolded for only 90 minutes can lead to enhanced hearing.

For now, the advantages are only temporary – the mice returned to their regular abilities right after a week in the light. But according to Petrus the likely is there for more lengthy-term changes, notably for men and women who are struggling to understand how to use cochlear implants right after going deaf.

“You have to force the brain to do anything it does not normally do. And if you do it long enough – if you have been put in the dark long adequate and forced to use the cochlear implant – you could understand how to use it. After the brain realises it is important, it will commence to adapt.”

Spending much more time in the dark could improve hearing in old age | Dana Smith

Benefit cuts explicitly linked to psychological health issues | Dominic Smith

A protest against the function capability evaluation in London final October. Photograph: Peter Marshall/Demotix/Corbis

Martin Precious, 60, was a hairdresser at a large-end London salon with celebrity customers right up until severe depression forced him to give up his work. Right after trying to handle his sickness for 5 years, he was referred to hospital for therapy. It was then that he was place in touch with Oxfordshire Mind’s Rewards for Far better Mental Wellness (BBMH) services after having troubles accessing his positive aspects.

BBMH provides expert advantages suggestions and casework for individuals with psychological health problems, and aims to get rid of financial uncertainty for vulnerable folks concerned about their revenue. “I did what I was advised to do and almost everything was back in location. Abruptly the anxiousness just went away fully,” says Precious.

BBMH has aided 3,800 people this kind of as Precious declare more than £5m of advantage entitlements because it was established in 2008.

Now Oxfordshire Thoughts has been awarded a 6-figure sum from the Huge Lottery fund to enable the services to broaden to particularly cope with the fallout from the government’s welfare reform programme. The BBMH hotline has acquired 20% a lot more calls in excess of the previous 18 months from men and women anxious about advantage alterations.

Patrick Taylor, chief executive of Oxfordshire Thoughts, says: “This money is exceptionally important. It’s critical that folks aren’t struggling on their very own.”

Final yr, Mind nationally reported a 50% rise in calls to its assistance support, Mind Infoline, with callers encountering extreme financial worries. On the internet visitors to its welfare suggestions page also increased markedly. There is effectively documented proof of monetary troubles exacerbating psychological sick wellness and of people with psychological health difficulties facing a high danger of poverty.

The £336,078 Massive Lottery grant acknowledges a hyperlink between welfare reforms and mental well being problems. Huge Lottery fund spokeswoman Alison Rowe says: “It might be difficult sufficient for impacted individuals to navigate by way of the welfare monetary modifications and spending budget accordingly, with no possessing additional mental wellness troubles on prime. This targeted support by Oxfordshire Mind will reply to a real want from men and women who are anxious about the transition, and provide informed advice and crucial peace of thoughts.”

The BBMH service has been pushed to the limit by the elevated workload brought on by appeals towards the perform capability assessment (WCA). It has a startling 98% good results price in appeals for its customers against fit-for-work rulings. The lottery funding will permit it to utilize one more total-time adviser and to train much more volunteers to run their hotline. “More than the previous two years our assets have had to shift massively into supporting people by way of appeals. That’s time-consuming, complex and detailed work,” says Taylor.

According to David Bryceland, BBMH’s task manager, its achievement price at appeal is so high since of the bad quality of selection-creating by assessors employed by Atos – the firm contracted to carry out the WCA tests – who he says aren’t qualified in mental overall health.

“The assessment itself is flawed due to the fact you’re asking an individual to go in and communicate to a total stranger about their most individual fears,” Bryceland says. “They never want to admit that they have not washed in five days or that they’ve invested half their day in the corner of the room because they are so paranoid the police are coming to get them.”

Clara Smith, 40, has bipolar disorder and turned to the BBMH crew six many years ago. She now claims employment help allowance and disability residing allowance, but believes that possessing to routinely resubmit her claim to the Division for Operate and Pensions (DWP) prevents her from getting a good frame of mind to her recovery. “Each and every single negotiation with the DWP is saturated with the most thoughts-bending nervousness because they treat you like a criminal from the word go,” she says.

Bryceland explains: “A lot of the recommendations from Atos reports say things like ‘this individual will be match to return to work inside 6 months’. When they have a extended-term mental well being issue, that kind of statement is each manifestly incorrect and really damaging to the individual. When they read through that they believe, ‘How am I going to be capable to handle that?’.”

Last yr, the court of appeal upheld a ruling that the WCA drawbacks folks with mental wellness issues. Oxfordshire Mind is calling for it to be scrapped altogether.

The DWP insists that Atos personnel have obtained coaching in assessing psychological overall health problems. A DWP spokesman says: “We have created – and carry on to make – substantial enhancements to the WCA procedure specifically for men and women with psychological health conditions. We’re committed to helping men and women who are capable of operate get off positive aspects, even though offering unconditional support to people who require it.”

Although in recovery, Precious started to volunteer on the BBMH hotline, and in 2010 he was employed as a total-time adviser assisting men and women with comparable fiscal worries. Several men and women are anxious about dropping their revenue altogether, he says. “I know from personalized encounter that when that issue is resolved all of a sudden the world isn’t going to seem so bad. It permits you to concentrate on your recovery.”

• Some names have been altered

Benefit cuts explicitly linked to psychological health issues | Dominic Smith