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Streeting: New hospitals, extra appointments and smoking ban will be delivered
Wes Streeting said the Government is working “at pace” to deliver new hospitals, 40,000 extra NHS appointments, and a smoking ban.
The Health Secretary told the Commons he intends to go into the next general election with a record the Tories “could only dream of”.
This comes as shadow health secretary Victoria Atkins branded Mr Streeting more “anchorman” than “action man”, while she criticised him for refusing to set a date for the delivery of extra NHS appointments.
Elsewhere, Mr Streeting promised a “stronger” Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which he claimed Rishi Sunak was “too weak” to deliver.
The Secretary of State said: “If it was such a priority, why did they leave the Bill unfinished?
“I’ll tell him why: because his party was divided on the issue and the prime minister at the time was too weak to stand up to his own right wingers who are now calling the shots in their party.”
“The smoking bill will be back, it will be stronger and, unlike the previous government, we will deliver it,” he added.
This came in response to shadow health minister Ben Spencer, who questioned why the Bill was yet to be introduced, adding: “They like to talk about their record of their first 100 days in office, and according to data from ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), 280 children under the age of 16 take up smoking in England each day.
“That’s 28,000 children in England in his first 100 days.”
Source: The Independent, 15 October 2024
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Pub garden smoking ban is not backed by majority of Brits, fresh poll reveals
A survey of 2,020 adults by Yonder found that 53 per cent believed punters should be allowed to spark up outside pubs.
It narrowly edges the 47 per cent opposed to the habit when excluding “don’t knows”.
Simon Clark, director of the pro-smoking group Forest that commissioned the poll, said Labour has “no mandate” to impose the draconian curbs.
He fumed: “It wasn’t in the Labour Party manifesto and the public only found out about it after the plan was leaked to a national newspaper.
“Banning smoking in beer gardens would be hugely damaging to Britain’s pubs, many of which are struggling already with 50 pubs closing every month in England and Wales in the first half of this year.”
The Sun revealed in August the plan to ban fags in a raft of outdoor areas including pub gardens.
Since then hospitality bosses have voiced existential fears to the sector, while even some Labour MPs have rebelled.
Source: The Sun, 15 October 2024
Editorial note: This survey was funded by Forest, a pro smoking lobby group which takes funding from the tobacco industry. Read more on Tobacco Tactics entry on Forest.
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NHS patient-safety system to be overhauled
The way patient safety is regulated and monitored is to be completely overhauled in England, the health secretary has announced.
Wes Streeting said the current system was "overly complex", as he set out a review of six key organisations.
It comes as further changes to the way the Care Quality Commission, the regulator of NHS services, operates have been unveiled.
The regulator, which inspects 90,000 different services across health and care, has been told to focus much more on key services such as hospitals, GPs and social care, after an interim report, in July, warned it was failing.
The six organisations to be reviewed are: the CQC, the National Guardian's Office, Healthwatch England and local Healthwatch services, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, the Patient Safety Commissioner and NHS Resolution.
The focus will be on how these bodies work together, with the findings feeding into the government's 10-year plan for the NHS, expected in the spring.
Streeting said: "Patient safety is the bedrock of a healthy NHS and social-care system. That's why we are taking steps to reform the CQC, to root out poor performance and ensure patients can have confidence in its ratings once again.”
"The government will never turn a blind eye to failure. An overly complex system of healthcare regulation and oversight is no good for patients. We will overhaul the system to make it effective and efficient to protect patient safety."
The latest announcement coincides with the publication of the final report into the CQC review, led by Dr Penny Dash.
The CQC has been told to stop inspecting regional integrated-care systems, partnership bodies incorporating the whole health and care system in an area, and instead return to its original model of appointing chief inspectors to focus on individual areas such as hospitals, GPs and social care.
Dr Dash's interim reports said the CQC lacked focus, with inexperienced inspectors some of whom had never been into a hospital before, while some care-home inspectors had never met a person with dementia.
She also identified a backlog of inspections, with some hospitals not having been inspected for 10 years.
But there are no plans to replace the single rating system – outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate.
Matthew Taylor, of the NHS Confederation, which represents health services, welcomed the announcements.
The current model had "not been fit for purpose" for "far too long", he said.
Source: BBC News 15 October 2024
See also: Department for Health and Social Care - Review into the operational effectiveness of the Care Quality Commission
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Children buy spice-laced vapes online rather than from `sketchy´ people, MP says
Children do not have to meet “sketchy” people to buy drug-laced vapes, they can order them online instead, an MP has warned.
Wera Hobhouse suggested the Government should use the Tobacco and Vapes Bill to target online sales, in a bid to prevent young people from buying e-liquids containing the synthetic street drug spice.
Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson warned spice-laced vapes are already “illegal” but admitted “further restrictions are needed” to combat the level of youth vaping.
The Liberal Democrat MP led a Commons debate on spice-spiked vapes, after the University of Bath’s Professor Chris Pudney tested 596 vapes confiscated from schools in England and found 16.6% contained the so-called “zombie drug” spice.
Labour has promised to revive the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in this year’s King’s Speech, after the previous Conservative government progressed plans to put limits and restrictions on how vapes are marketed. The previous government also pledged a ban on disposable vapes.
“Some bits of the Bill will address the issue,” Ms Hobhouse told MPs on Tuesday.
“But I am particularly talking about refills and what the Government is intending to do about refills and the ready availability on the internet.”
The MP for Bath suggested children have used Snapchat and Telegram to buy drugs, and added: “Gone are the days when you needed to meet a sketchy person in a back alley to get hold of illegal drugs. These days, these drugs are now readily available over the internet and that is a big part of the problem.”
She called on the Government to introduce tougher “regulatory oversight for online platforms” and to set up a “task force” comprising technology firm representatives and cybersecurity experts for better detection and disruption of online spice distribution.
Source: Daily Mail, 15 October 2024
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Shares in UK gambling firms fall £2bn amid talk of higher taxes in budget
Shares in British gambling companies have dropped sharply, reducing the stock market value of large operators by more than £2bn, after the Guardian reported that Treasury officials could tap the sector for between £900m and £3bn in extra taxes.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has come under pressure from two influential thinktanks to raise taxes on the industry, as she pulls every available lever to plug a £22bn “black hole” in the nation’s finances.
Treasury officials working on Labour’s first budget in 14 years, which will be announced on 30 October, are understood to be open to raising the amount of duty paid by an industry that takes in £11bn a year from British punters.
There are two separate proposals, one from the Social Market Foundation (SMF) that would increase online gaming taxes by £900m, and another, from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), that would lift a range of duties levied on the sector by nearly £3bn.
Analysts said the government was unlikely to opt for the higher range of duty but warned that the sector was facing tougher regulation and taxes.
In response, investors sold off shares in gambling companies on Monday, collectively cutting their value by more than £2bn. Ladbrokes-owner Entain fell 8% while Flutter, which owns brands including Paddy Power and SkyBet, fell nearly 6%.
One of the tax plans that Treasury officials are looking at hails from the left-leaning IPPR. The thinktank’s report estimates the government could raise £2.9bn next year – and up to £3.4bn by 2030 – by doubling taxes on “higher harm” products such as online casino games. Last year, the taxes raised £3.3bn, or about £2.2bn excluding lottery duty.
Under the IPPR proposals, the Treasury would leave duties untouched on “lower harm” activities such as the lottery and bingo. Instead, they argue the chancellor should double taxes such as the 15% general betting duty levied on high-street bookmakers’ profits.
Source: The Guardian, 14 October 2024
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Smoking leaves a trace in bones for centuries, archaeologists find
Tobacco leaves traces in smokers’ bones for the rest of their lives and for centuries after their deaths, archaeologists have found, providing a way to reveal the smoking habits of skeletons for the first time.
The research from the University of Leicester, based on human remains buried in Britain between the 12th and 19th centuries, shows the long-lasting impact of tobacco on a smoker’s bones and helps to illustrate the link between smoking and bone-related conditions, such as an increased risk of fractures.
The introduction of tobacco to western Europe about 500 years ago led to “changes in human bone”, the researchers discovered after comparing remains from earlier and later than the 16th century.
In the past, archaeologists have relied on teeth to ascertain whether a skeleton belonged to a smoker, looking for stains or for signs of wear caused by a pipe being held in the mouth. However, in many cases “dental remains have not survived or teeth were lost prior to death”, rendering this method useless.
The researchers used mass spectroscopy to analyse the molecular make-up of the bones, and found 45 molecular features that differed between the bones of smokers and non-smokers.
Dr Sarah Inskip, an author of the study, said: “Our research shows that there are significant differences in the molecular features contained in [the] bone of past tobacco users and non-users. This potentially shows that we can see the impact that tobacco use has on the structure of our skeletons.
“Our ongoing research aims to ascertain how these differences emerge as this may have significance for understanding why tobacco use is a risk factor for some musculoskeletal and dental disorders.”
Source: The Times, 15 October 2024
See also: Science Advances - Archaeometabolomics characterizes phenotypic differences in human cortical bone at a molecular level relating to tobacco use
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.
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