
Neil O’Brien: The NHS and jobs. Family and community. Indispensable means of boosting our mental health.
It’s welcome that we’re investing much more in services. But we need to tackle the causes too.
It’s welcome that we’re investing much more in services. But we need to tackle the causes too.
We should double down on Product Development Partnerships, which are alive and well in the field of public health.
This is not an easy issue to solve. Rough sleeping is as much a health issue as it is a housing issue – it is often a crisis of addiction and mental health as well.
Duncan Smith names “five giants”: family breakdown, worklessness, serious personal debt, addiction and educational underachievement.
We need a long-term poverty strategy and a Social Justice Cabinet Committee. And here’s a Christmas holiday plan for childrens’ food.
Together with tax cuts and less regulation, higher or more extensive benefits look like better support for hungry children than vouchers.
In the Thames Valley, those under 18 caught with drugs are given an education programme, with sanctions if they refuse to attend.
The solution to the problems they described isn’t debate over regulation – but scaling up programmes that focus on young people heading for the clink.
The Chancellor is groping his way, knowing well that the future is unknowable, trying to hold on to as much of the past as he can.
A bed is not enough. A chance of employment, as well as good physical and mental health are needed to turn lives around.
Plus: vision from the top for left-behind pupils, a National Education Broadcasting Service, and Alan Turing summer schools.
We’ve seen gunshot wounds and babies born as a result of rape. With UK Border Force in Dover, we found a girl heading for a lifetime of sexual slavery.
Getting the economy moving won’t even begin to give the Government political momentum. It will need to conduct its own Fairness Audit.
When the brief is, for example, a speech to commemorate Armistice Day or World AIDS Day, the challenge is even more intense.
Plus: As of writing, I’ve had hardly any communications at all from constituents about the Coronavirus.