Avoid cuts that will widen gaps in child development, Marmot urges

The public health expert Michael Marmot has pleaded with the UK government not to do “anything that will make things worse” in terms of health inequalities.

Professor Marmot said he welcomed the government’s white paper on public health, Healthy Lives, Healthy People, which puts the responsibility for public health in England in the hands of local authorities (BMJ 2010;341:c6938, doi:10.1136/bmj.c6938), but he admitted that he had “great difficulty” talking about the fact that only 56% of children are rated by their teachers as having achieved a good level of development by the age of 5 years.

Professor Marmot was speaking at the launch of new charts designed to track the effect of government policies on health inequalities. The charts were put together by the London Health …