Working together to raise the healthiest generation ever
Source: gov.uk (2025-11-28)

The Secretary of State addressed the Barnardo's Health Conference about children’s health.

Thank you, Sarah.

It was good to catch the tail end on some of what Rachel was saying, as well as the Children’s Commissioner, where happily there’s an enormous overlap and alignment between our ambition for children and young people in our country.

As you know, Sarah, it’s always a pleasure for me to come to The King’s Fund, but I’m especially delighted to be here today to talk about a subject close to my heart.

And on that note, I’m particularly pleased that we have so many young people with us here today.

I always try to say yes to Barnardo’s whenever they ask me to do something because we share a mission which is to provide the best possible start in life, especially for kids from backgrounds like mine.

Dr Barnardo’s first orphanage was set up in Stepney, just down the road from the council estate I grew up on.

And I now live in Barkingside, in the middle of my constituency, Ilford North, just a stone’s throw from the Barnardo’s children’s homes that have since been converted into housing, and where Barnardo’s as a charity is now headquartered.

And the truth is that for all the progress we’ve made since those homes were established and Barnardo’s initial work was at its height at the turn of the 20th century - when philanthropy was required to compensate for the absence of the state - in recent years, progress has stalled when it comes to improving the life chances and opportunities for kids from working class backgrounds like mine.

Indeed, when I think back to my childhood, however tough we had it, it is nothing compared to the lives of children whose challenges confront me in my constituency surgeries today.

I grew up in poverty in a single-parent household, and life wasn’t easy.

But the welfare state put food in our fridge, money in the electric meter and helped my mum with costs like school uniform.

The council flat we lived in wasn’t great, and we had to contend with bare floors and the occasional visits of cockroaches from our neighbours next door.

But at least we had a council flat.

Kids I represent today are too often in temporary accommodation, often living in bed and breakfasts, without cooking or washing facilities, no space to study or play, and pushed from pillar to post.

I had a great state education, and teachers at both my primary and secondary schools worked their magic to bring out the best in me.

But too often, kids today are shunted from school to school, as their parents are moved around cities and towns, and sometimes from one city or county to another.

We had a big family support network right across the East End, which helped my mum with childcare as she tried to hold down a range of temporary and low-paid jobs.

But families today are broken apart and split up.

All of that support - from a loving family, outstanding teachers and the welfare state - are what allowed me to beat the odds, make it to one of the world’s best universities and to sit around the Cabinet table as part of the most working-class cabinet in British political history.

But it isn’t enough for a few of us to beat the odds.

My mission is to change the odds for everyone.

That’s why I entered politics, it’s why I’m a Labour MP, and it’s the thing that motivates me in politics above all else.

As Barnardo’s has highlighted through its own campaigning, some of the starkest inequalities in our society are most apparent when it comes to children’s health.

The overall picture makes for grim reading.

Children in England are sicker today than the generation of a decade ago - in fact, they face some of the poorest health outcomes in Europe.

Obesity in 4 and 5-year-olds is at its highest level since records began - a health timebomb that leaves them at greater risk from some of the biggest killers like cancer and heart disease later in life.

The leading cause of hospital admissions amongst kids aged between 5 and 9 is to have their rotting teeth pulled out.

And so what does it say about us, as a country, if we ignore a situation where our children are sicker, less happy, and less active than their peers around the world?

What kind of start in life are we giving our children?

And if we allow it to continue, then what kind of future are we leaving to them?

Our children will lead shorter, less healthy lives.

Our NHS will buckle under a tidal wave of chronic conditions.

Our society will become fractured, as those in work will be paying more to care for a growing number unable to work.

And our economy will suffer, because our businesses will be denied the talent the next generation could offer.

Those are all reasons to act.

But what’s more - and this, sadly, isn’t going to surprise anyone - health problems do not fall on children evenly.

Childhood obesity and tooth decay are both more common in the most deprived communities. Deprivation worsens mental health.

There’s no getting away from the stark truth that the poorest kids are in the poorest health.

And when a child is too sick for school, then the trajectory of their whole life is on the line.

So this is not just about health, it is about social justice and a lottery of life chances where the odds are stacked against those from the poorest backgrounds.

For too many people today, their health is dictated by their wealth.

This is an affront to the vision set out by my [political content removed] predecessors when they built the National Health Service in 1948.

And it is an indictment on Britain in the 21st century that the very injustice they sought to confront is alive and kicking today.

Normally when I’m here at The King’s Fund, I talk about the work we’re doing to turn around our NHS.

And that isn’t irrelevant to what we’re talking about today.

Because this [political content removed] government has delivered 5 million additional appointments; we have cut the paediatric waiting list by 40,000 - almost 20,000 fewer children are waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment, because we are cutting waiting times.

Of course, there is much more to do - not least to make sure that children’s waiting times, whether for planned care, emergency services or mental health, are given the public attention and scrutiny they deserve, let alone government action.

But the biggest health inequalities are entrenched years before patients walk through the doors of the NHS.

And when it comes to children’s health, our job is not just to make sure that the NHS is there for them when they need it; it must be to prevent them needing the NHS at all.

If, as this session is titled, it takes a village to raise a child, then it will take the whole country to raise a generation healthier than any before it.

It will take the support of families, communities, charities, businesses, and local and national government to bring about change.

That’s why the mission-driven approach we set out in opposition remains the right approach to the monumental challenges we face today.

We can’t create a healthy society without the state, nor can the state do it alone.

And so we’re working in partnership with business, civil society and all of us as citizens on our national mission to close the gap between rich and poor so we all live well for longer.

Some of you might have seen, for example, that we partnered with Joe Wicks to inspire children to stay active over the summer holidays and start building healthier habits from a younger age.

The supervised toothbrushing happening in nurseries and schools across the country is in no small part thanks to the millions of toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste provided by Colgate.

And we are working directly with the food industry to cut the number of calories in the average shopping basket and make the healthy choice the easy choice for parents.

There is a coalition of the willing to help build a healthier nation, and in many cases, they aren’t even waiting for government.

Danone has committed to never introducing a high saturated fat, salt or sugar product targeted at children.

Sainsbury’s runs a ‘Great Fruit and Veg Challenge’, where customers can win bonus Nectar points by shopping for fruit and vegetables.

Teachers and children got together to create the Daily Mile: 15 minutes of exercise that helps children feel healthier, happier and more focused in school.

People are more health conscious than ever before. An active state should back those promoting good health, not get in their way.

And where there is market failure, the state must step in to protect society’s interests.

That means combatting the drivers of ill health within children’s lives: poor diets, damp homes, dirty air and a lack of opportunity. In short, it means attacking the poverty.

So this [political content removed] government is tackling the sickness in our society.

We are expanding free school meals, and in doing so lifting 100,000 children out of poverty.

We are feeding the next generation with primary school breakfast clubs, so every child starts the day with a hungry mind, not a hungry belly.

This is contested territory.

There are those who say that it is the responsibility of families not the state to ensure children are well fed, and that no child should be turning up at school with an empty stomach.

I understand the sentiment and don’t disagree that parents have a responsibility to provide for their children.

However, life’s a bit more complicated than that.

As I’ve shared before, I was one full English breakfast away from being aborted.

It was only when I reached the age of 17 - the same age my dad was when I was conceived - that I had any comprehension of how terrifying it must have been for him and my mum, who was only 18 herself at the time, when they received the news that there was a baby on the way.

In case you haven’t guessed by now, I wasn’t planned. I think the technical term is ‘an accident’.

And it is far too easy for others who’ve never walked in the shoes of parents like mine to pass judgement and to write off people as feckless and irresponsible.

Like the DSS official in my childhood, for younger members of the audience, that was the previous incarnation of the organisation we come to love as the DWP and this DSS official back in the 80s said to my mum during one degrading interrogation: “Do you know we have to pay for your son out of our taxes?”

If I go further back in my family, I can offer a more extreme example of my maternal grandfather - who was in and out of prison during my mum’s childhood and during my childhood, with a string of convictions for armed robbery.

Before he died, he revealed he had been the victim of the most serious child abuse in his own home.

While that doesn’t excuse his crimes, it does explain why, at such a young age, he found himself in the custody of the state rather than in the care of the state, and why that might well have felt like a safer place than to be at home.

So, while I accept you may find some examples that fit the stereotype, I do not buy into the idea that those in need of state support are all feckless, irresponsible and on the take.

In fact, the real scandal in Britain today are the numbers of parents who are both in work and in poverty.

Like the mum with 3 daughters who came to see me at my advice surgery on Friday with her girls in tow.

She had fled domestic violence and had been rehoused on the other side of London in a bed and breakfast.

That incredible woman was handwashing the girls’ uniform every night, making sure they were cleaned and pressed and then doing a 3-hour round trip every day to make sure her girls go to school, all while holding down 3 separate jobs at the same time.

Please don’t tell me that women or people like her are feckless or irresponsible or on the take, when she is facing down challenges and hardships that would break many of us.

And even if you can find a family that fits the stereotype that makes for sensational tabloid copy, I do not believe it is morally right to punish children or abandon them to the trap of poverty because of the judgements we make about the choices of their parents.

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And if that moral argument - that we should never abandon children to poverty - isn’t persuasive enough, let me offer the pragmatic case: that it is far better and far more cost-effective to invest in these children now than to pay the price for social failure later.

I stand here today as the pragmatic case personified: the product of the wise investment of the British taxpayer.

Taxpayers, including members of my family, incidentally, who clothed me, housed me, fed me, and educated me.

As a result, I am now in a position to not just pay back that debt to society, but to pay it forward to the next generation, too.

Hard work and responsibility matter.

That was certainly the ethic that was instilled in me by my father and his father, who I must say represent a quite different East End stereotype to my gangster grandad.

But hard work and responsibility are built on security.

Breakfast clubs are about giving children a nutritious meal. They are also about giving parents the opportunity to go for that job that’s an extra half-hour drive away, or bus ride away or to take an educational course to help them get on - as my mum was doing at the same time she was receiving her scolding by the DSS.

If we want people to work hard, we must first ensure they have the opportunity to do so, and we need to wage war against child poverty in our country confidently, and not apologetically.

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This is a government that is already lifting children out of poverty because people like Bridget Phillipson and I have lived it and experienced it.

And in addition to Bridget’s work at Education, right across Whitehall, this government is pursuing wider public health reform that draws in housing, employment and the environment - because all of them shape the health and life chances of children and young people.

Cold, damp, overcrowded homes make people sick.

That’s why we’re forcing social landlords to fix dangerous homes with Awaab’s Law, in honour of 2-year-old Awaab Ishak who died after prolonged exposure to damp and mould.

My cabinet colleagues are cutting pollution and cleaning up the air our children breathe to preserve our planet for the future.

They are helping families heat their homes this winter by extending the warm homes discount.

And they are empowering local authorities to stop fast food shops opening outside schools.

In my own department, we’re:
- introducing a generational ban on smoking
- cracking down on the marketing and targeting of vapes to kids
- banning the advertising of junk food to children
- banning the sale of energy drinks to under 16s
- and rolling out mental health support in every primary and secondary school in the country
Every one of those policies is a health policy, regardless of whether they are delivered by my department or the NHS or not.

Each one is a prevention policy. And every one is an investment in a better future.

Because prevention is always better than cure.

And today I announce we are going further.

The current levy on added sugar in soft drinks - [political content removed] - will now also be applied to bottles and cartons of milkshakes, flavoured milks and milk substitute drinks.

The threshold for the amount of sugar in a drink is also coming down to 4.5g per 100ml.

The levy has already led to fewer children in England having their teeth pulled out - and the amount of sugar consumed by children from soft drinks is down by half.

We estimate that this next step will take the equivalent of around 4 million calories per day out of children’s diets - and will cut obesity by almost 15,000 people, preventing cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Now, some call this levy a ‘sugar tax’.

But - quite frankly - I’m more interested in how it helps kids lose pounds than how it helps the Chancellor raise pennies.

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Because if we’re going to keep taxes down, if we’re going to keep waiting lists down, if we’re going to make the NHS sustainable for the longer term, then we have to reduce the rising tide of preventable illness.

It’s only with the combination of modernisation to make the NHS more efficient, and tough action to improve our nation’s health, that we will keep the costs of healthcare down, and with them the need for tax rises.

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Raising the healthiest generation ever isn’t just a campaign slogan; it’s a call to action.

It’s about giving kids the best start in life by protecting them from debilitating diseases and chronic conditions.

Because when children are healthy, they learn better.

It’s about expanding opportunity for every child in this country.

Because when they learn better, they earn better.

And it’s about stemming demand so that the NHS your generation inherits is sustainable, resilient and strong and always there for you when you need it.

That is the prize for raising the healthiest generation ever.

A country that is more equal, more just, and more successful.

And if we work together, I’m convinced we will make it a reality for generations to come.

Thank you.