A return to austerity will further damage the public’s health

UK government policy has changed at such dizzying speed that any comment or prediction is likely to be out of date by the time it was written, let alone published. What follows was initially written ahead of the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, making an announcement on the budget on 17 October. By the weekend, the conclusions of the market that unfunded tax cuts, and large increases in government debt, were no recipe for economic growth—actually, were dangerous mismanagement of the economy—were so dramatic that the Truss government’s fiscal policy was largely jettisoned. What we were promised instead from Jeremy Hunt was not a new recognition of equity of health and wellbeing, but a return to austerity. If that means a return to the brutal cuts in public spending and increases in inequality of the Cameron/Osborne government we can expect further damage to the public’s health, increases in health inequalities, and…
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