PM warned over axing of Public Health England

More than 70 health organisations have written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing deep concern over the recent abolition of Public Health England.

Seen by many as an attempt by ministers to deflect attention from their own failings over the coronavirus crisis, the letter warns that the controversial move will damage the fight against obesity, smoking and alcohol misuse.

PHE will be axed at the end of March 2021, with much of its work being subsumed into a new body, the National Institute for Health Protection. The new organisation will work alongside two other bodies which have played a key role in the fight against coronavirus, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS Track and Trace.

Signatories say they are ‘deeply concerned’ that the government’s plans for the reorganisation of health protection in the UK currently pays ‘insufficient attention to the vital health improvement and other wider functions of Public Health England’.

The letter, published in The BMJ, reads: “Reorganisation risks fragmentation across different risk factors and between health protection and health improvement… The communities hit hardest by Covid-19 are those suffering most from inequalities in health and well-being. It is a false choice to neglect vital health improvement measures, such as those that target smoking, obesity, alcohol, and mental health, in order to fight Covid-19.”

Alex Norris, Labour’s shadow public health minister, said: “The structural reorganisation of PHE is a desperate attempt to shift the blame after years of cutting public health budgets, when the real shift we need in the fight against this virus is towards an effective local test and trace system that delivers mass testing and case finding. We still have no answer on what will happen to other vital areas of public health like addiction, obesity and sexual health.”