National Health Policy (Hansard, 10 November 1980)

§ Mr. Moyle

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) what his estimate is of the annual cost of a health development council with responsibility for advice on and planning of collaborative national health policy aimed at reducing inequalities as recommended by the Black working group.

(2) what estimate he has made of the annual cost of implementing the Black working group's recommendation that the national food survey should be developed into a more effective instrument of nutritional surveillance in relation to health and as a means whereby various at risk groups could be identified, on the assumption that it is possible to draw on existing epidemiological expertise within the Office of Population and Censuses and Surveys and elsewhere;

(3) what estimate he has made of the annual amount by which the Health Education Council's budget needs to be increased in order to allow the council 70W to carry out the Black working group's recommendation that the council, in conjunction with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, should mount child accident prevention programmes directed at local authority planners, engineers and architects;

(4) what estimate he has made of the annual cost of implementing the recommendation of the Black working group that improved information should be collected on accidents to children;

(5) what estimate he has made of the annual cost of implementing the recommendation of the Black working group that school health statistics should routinely provide, in relation to occupational class, the results of tests of hearing, vision, and measures of height and weight in a representative sample of schools;

(6) what estimates he has made of the annual cost of implementing the recommendation of the Black working group that research into the inequalities in health and their causes be adopted as a priority by his Department in collaboration with the Medical Research Council and the Social Science Research Council;

(7) what estimate he has made of the cost of the Black working group's recommendation that school health care services should be more closely linked with general practice with a view to improving surveillance and follow-up of school children identified by the school health service as belonging to families at risk and residing in areas of special need;

(8) what estimate he has made of the cost of implementing the Black working group's recommendation that an assessment which determines the severity of disablement should be adopted as a guide to the health and personal social services priorities of disabled individuals, such assessment being related to the limitation of activities, rather than loss of faculty or type of handicap;

(9) what estimate he has made of the cost of the Black working group's recommendation that a further working group should be set up to consider the present functions and structure of hospital, residential and domiciliary care for the elderly in relation to their needs, and also whether sheltered housing should be the responsibility of social service or housing departments and to make recommendations;

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(10) what estimate has he made of the annual cost of implementing the Black working group's recommendations that joint funding within the existing National Health Service budget should be introduced to encourage further more specific joint care programmes;

(11) what estimate he has made of the cost of agreeing between his Department and the local authority associations of criteria for admission to, or continuing of, residential care of homeless elderly people aimed at ensuring that such people were not offered accommodation only in residential homes;

(12) what estimate he has made of the cost of implementing the Black working group recommendation that his Department should announce, following consultation with the relevant representative bodies and agencies, a series of national health goals covering behaviour towards diet, exercise, smoking and the consumption of alcohol;

(13) what estimate he has made of the cost of instructing the area health authority and districts to review the accessibility and facilities of all ante-natal and child clinics in the areas for which they are responsible with a view to increasing their utilisation by mothers in the early stages of pregnancy;

(14) what estimate he has made of the annual cost of implementing the Black working group recommendation that the general household survey be developed on an occasional basis as a more comprehensive measure of income or command over resources either by modifying such a measure with estimates of total wealth or some of the more prevalent forms of wealth such as housing and savings or by the integration of income and wealth employing annuitisation;

(15) what estimate he had made of the cost of implementing the recommendation of the Black working party that a meeting should take place between representatives of his Department, the Department of Employment, the Health and Safety at Work Executive, the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry to draw up a code of minimally acceptable and desirable conditions of work in industry, trade and commerce.