The government should bring in ‘nanny state’ measures to legislate against factors that are harmful to health, according to the outgoing chair of NHS England.
Richard Meddings, the chair of the board of NHS England, told health and social care podcast Voices of Care last week, that there should be ‘better challenges’ to sugar and fats and to social media.
On the podcast Mr Meddings, who is stepping down from his role in March, said it was ‘politically naïve’ and that ‘I suspect many people wouldn’t agree with me’. But that it was important to legislate against things that are harmful to health.
He said: ‘It’s the fact that society is becoming sicker and therefore is more demanding. And I may be in a minority of views, but I would welcome in a number of areas the nanny state.
‘I would want to see better challenges to sugars and to fats. I’d like to see challenges to social media. In Scotland, the evidence is that minimum alcohol pricing has been beneficial to public health.’
He added that there should be a ‘missional vision’ that our country is among the fittest or healthiest in Europe, but to get to that point it is ‘important that we try and legislate against some of those contributors to ill health’.
He recognised these factors were not all of the contributors, as poor housing, deprivation and education also have an impact on health.
‘But actually, I would legislate more against factors that we know are harmful to health,’ he said. ‘If we don’t, the ability of the health service’s capacity to meet that exponential growth in demand just becomes more challenging.’
He added: ‘We know that obesity triggers at least 13 cancers, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, diabetes and obesity is a real scourge on the health of the nation. Society is becoming sicker and there is more demand on the NHS.’
Mr Meddings said he agreed with the Lord Darzi report that the NHS’s ‘vital signs are strong’, but said investment was needed in the workforce plan and technology moving forward.
‘The NHS is massively different to what it was five years ago,’ he said. ‘There is a level of innovation and evolution which is happening all the time which is often missed, but we have got to fix the basics and that will require, in the main, capital investment, but you can’t invest in everything.
‘But for me, we need the investment in our workforce plan. We need to keep supporting life sciences and med tech and looking at technology transformation.’
He added that the NHS App has the potential to be ‘revolutionary’ and paid tribute to those working in primary care who provide ‘record levels’ of healthcare.
It comes as the government has introduced a tobacco and vapes bill into parliament last week, to try and phase out smoking among young people and clamp down on vaping.
