Andy Burnham's free swimming
by Beatrice Karol Burks
Andy Burnham MP, Secretary of State for Health, made a passionate case for early intervention and prevention in healthcare as he addressed a full room of officials and press this afternoon at Demos.
'I can genuinely imagine a smoke-free future,' he said, defending the Government’s smoking ban against the inevitable charges of illiberalism from Demos’ Director, Richard Reeves.
Despite warm-hearted scepticism from those such as Danny Finkelstein of The Times, prevention – stopping people from smoking before they get cancer and encouraging exercise to combat diabetes – can make significant savings and Burnham wasted no time in rattling these off; prevention can save 1p in every £1 and could prevent one in every nine deaths. For every £1 spent on preventative healthcare, £1.20 is saved.
But is ‘putting walking and cycling at the heart of local government’ enough to meet the challenge of an obesity epidemic? And does labelling alcohol with warnings for pregnant women really address the target audience? The question really is: how can Government rearrange the choice architecture around healthcare when, as Burnham admitted, ‘the age of deference is over’ and people no longer listen to the ‘man from the ministry’?
Changing street layout to make roads more cyclist and pedestrian friendly is one way. Programmes like Change4Life send positive messages about healthy living. Brockenhurst, in the affluent New Forest boasts some of the highest life expectancies in the country partly thanks to a healthy village project that has been prescribing gym membership and swimming clubs to the residents for over ten years. The challenge will be whether initiatives like this can be rolled out nationwide, especially into poor urban areas.
When it came to alcohol, Burnham admitted a tension between a new TV ad campaign against drinking, airing for the first time tonight, and recent laws that allow product placement in the nation’s favourite shows. Burnham's free swimming scheme is a celebrated initiative, but his joke about 'making my free swimming scheme compulsory' showed that there is only so far Government can go towards forcing the public to become healthier.
Clearly, coaxing people into doing the ‘right thing’ isn’t as easy or convenient as Sunstein and Thaler might make out, but it when it corresponds to what people want, it can work.
Download Burnham's speech.
