Health Bill

I am sure that the House is grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way so frequently, although I hope to be considerably briefer to allow time for the many Back Benchers who wish to speak. We are not, I am afraid, presented with a landmark Bill in public health. It was our intention, had we been elected in May, to introduce a public health Bill that would have achieved landmark changes in public health. It would have reorganised public health to enable public health directors to use dedicated resources across the public and private sectors, ending the fragmentation of recent years. It would have addressed the whole range of public health issues, including sexually transmitted infections, where the Government have failed lamentably. I have discovered in the past few days that there is to be no advertising of positive sexual health messages to young people this year, in circumstances where sexually transmitted infections are at epidemic levels. A Government who abolished the Health Education Authority and have presided over the highest rate of rising obesity in western Europe have allowed sexually transmitted infections to reach epidemic levels, as compared with a Conservative Government who acted on the problems relating to HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and secured a much lower incidence of HIV. This country now has the fastest rising levels of HIV since 1997. The Bill is not a landmark measure in public health even as regards smoking. The reduction in the prevalence of smoking was faster in the 1980s than it has been since 1997.