Good morning. Keir Starmer will today start a series of fortnightly visits around Britain intended to promote Labour’s “missions”, and today he is in the north-west of England launching the party’s child health action plan. He has written about the proposals for the Guardian here.
As Pippa Crerar explains in her report, Starmer is not afraid of claims that measures like supervised teeth brushing for three to five-year-olds in nursery are “nanny state”. Starmer says:
I know that we need to take on this question of the nanny state. The moment you do anything on child health, people say ‘you’re going down the road of the nanny state.’ We want to have that fight.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, was on the Today programme this morning speaking about the plans and he said he was shocked by the evidence showing the extent to which the health and wellbeing of the nation’s children has declined. He said, compared to their international peers, children were getting shorter under the Tories.
At the heart of all of the policies we’re we’re announcing today is a focus on prevention, promoting good health amongst kids, and making sure that we arrest this decline in our country.
When you look at the OECD tables, and you look at the height of children, which is an indicator of their health, their nutrition and their exercise, we’re slipping down the international rankings for boys and girls. We are literally not standing as tall as we did on the world stage. And I think this is embarrassing.
And in its news releaase Labour says:
British children today are smaller than Haitian children, fatter than the French, and less happy than the Turks.
The height of the average British five-year old girl has fallen by 27 places in international rankings over the last three decades, with the average British five-year-old boy has fallen by 33 places on the height league table.
Here is a chart from an ITV report that illustrates the point.
Labour says it wants to “end the scandal of plummeting child health outcomes” and produce “the healthiest and happiest generation of children ever in Britain”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: NHS England publishes its monthly performance figures.
Morning: Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, are on a visit in the north-west of England to promote Labour’s health missions. They are both doing media interviews.
10am: The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry resumes for the first time since the ITV drama ignited public outrage about the scandal. Stephen Bradshaw, a former Post Office investigator, is giving evidence.
After 10.30am: Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, makes a statement on next week’s business in the chamber.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Noon: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.
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