#public-health-england

#public-health-england

What's the best way to fix Britain's economy?According to Labour and the Conservatives, the answer is growth.Yet this focus overlooks another fundamental reason for Britain's sluggish productivity.The UK is unwell.Every year, 2% of its GDP or 43bn is lost due to poor health, according to new findings from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

Governments should set aside 10% of health spending for preventive and public measures such as cycle lanes and anti-obesity strategies, a thinktank has said, warning that political short-termism over health is making the UK increasingly ill and unequal.The report by the Tony Blair Institute argues that a centralised NHS model almost entirely focused on treating sickness rather than on wider objectives is not only harming people's health but hampering the economy, with more than 2.5 million people out of the labour market because of long-term ailments.

In the early days of the pandemic, ministers believed and told the public the UK was at the forefront of Covid testing.The government's scientific advisers appeared to share the view and were perhaps even a factor in its widespread belief.At the first Sage meeting in January 2020, the assembled experts said a Covid test would be ready within days and that it could be scalable across the UK in weeks.

Public goods for all, or private luxury for some?There is perhaps no greater symbol of these opposing visions than Rishi Sunak's new private swimming pool.The prime minister's heated pool consumes so much energy that he apparently paid for the local electricity network to be upgraded to meet its power demands.

A plan to release thousands of prisoners was considered during the Covid-19 lockdown, according to Matt Hancock's diaries.The details, first reported by the Daily Mail which is serialising the former health secretary's journals, come as Mr Hancock returns to Westminster after his stint on ITV's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! Mr Hancock, who was one of the key figures in government as the country navigated the pandemic, reveals in his diaries that the Ministry of Justice proposed to release prisoners amid concerns about the spread of the virus.

Forest Green Rovers are supporting the wearing of yellow laces as part of a campaign to stop gambling advertising and sponsorship in football.League One Rovers are playing an FA Cup first-round tie away at South Shields on Saturday, live on the BBC.Club owner Dale Vince told BBC Sport gambling in football "is uncontrolled, quite frankly, it's running away".

A company paid hundreds of millions of pounds for Covid-19 testing contracts has demanded a parliamentary committee retract a report saying it is impossible to have confidence the deals were awarded properly.Lawyers from Schillings, representing Randox Laboratories, have written several times to the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) taking issue with its highly critical paper from July, which accused the Government of failing in its duties to be transparent about meetings with the firm.