In a report on Public health post-2013, the Health Committee said it had heard evidence that this would help local government to directly improve the health of their local communities and reduce health inequalities.
“Local authorities need the levers to be able to take effective action to protect local communities and this is especially important given the cuts to their budgets,” the MPs added.

The report noted how local authorities had been dealt an in-year cut of £200m last year and now faced further real terms cuts to public health budgets.

But the MPs warned that cuts to public health and the front line services they delivered were a false economy “as they not only add to the future costs of health and social care but risk widening health inequalities”.
The committee highlighted Theresa May’s comments in her first speech as Prime Minister, where she put a reduction of health inequalities at the top of her list for action.

The committee called on the Government to recognise that tackling health inequalities and improving public health would not primarily happen in hospitals, even though hospitals received the lion’s share of health funding. “Rather, it requires a whole life course approach, tackling the wider determinants of health in local communities, effective action on prevention and early intervention, and through joined-up policy making at a national level.”

The MPs also claimed there was a “growing mismatch” between spending on public health and the significance attached to prevention in the NHS 5 Year Forward View.

The report called for a Cabinet Office minister to be given specific responsibility for embedding health across all areas of Government policy at national level.

It concluded that while there was evidence of progress locally, there was less evidence of such an approach becoming embedded across Government departments.

Health Committee Chair, Dr Sarah Wollaston MP, said: “The disappointing watering down of the childhood obesity strategy, published in August, demonstrates the gap in joined-up evidence-based policy to improve health and wellbeing. Government must match the rhetoric on reducing health inequality with a resolve to take on big industry interests and will need to be prepared to go further if it is serious about achieving its stated aims.”