LABOUR has claimed that in the last year, more than £1.8million has been cut from Bradford Council’s budget for fighting obesity in children and adults, STIs, smoking and drug addiction.

The party has published new analysis exposing health cuts to local councils by the Conservative government.

In Bradford they claim that children’s public health services have been cut by £1,230,000, the budget for tackling obesity has been cut by £145,000, help with quitting smoking has been cut by £156,000 and services for combating drug addiction have been cut by £1,795,000.

The party’s new research shows that Bradford is one of the 85 per cent of councils that are being forced by Conservative austerity to reduce their public health budgets this year. It says that cuts to public health services have added up to more than £96m in 2017/18 to 2017/18.

The figures come from Labour’s analysis of this year’s Revenue Account Budget figures published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Labour is calling for the Government to reverse these damaging cuts to public health in the Autumn Budget.

Jo Pike, Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Shipley, said: “Drug-related deaths are at their highest ever, rates of STIs are rising, more children are leaving school obese than ever before and improvements in life expectancy have slowed. These swingeing cuts to public health budgets are cynical, short-sighted and wrong.

“Local services that are there to keep people well and out of hospital are being slashed in every part of England, and people are suffering. The fact is these cuts to health budgets will leave people sicker, and in the long run will cost the NHS much more than they save.

“The Conservative cuts are pushing us into a public health crisis.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “There have been significant improvements in public health since 2010, with robust Government action leading to a fall in rates of smoking and drug use.

“There is always more to be done, which is exactly why we are giving £16 billion to local councils to fund public health services over the current spending period. We’re supporting them with our world leading childhood obesity plan alongside measures to halve child obesity by 2030, and work is underway to develop a new alcohol strategy.”