Britain has suffered terribly under these Tories, especially our children. The only word for it is neglect | Keir Starmer

LLike all parents of teenage children, I worry about them. About what they are exposed to online, their physical health and the pressure on their mental health. We know that healthy children make healthy families – that’s common sense – but we also know that if you want to know whether a country is going in the right or wrong direction, look no further than the country’s children.

The way we treat our children says so much about our priorities. The official, independent statistics don’t lie. When I first watched them, I was angry and shocked by the story they told, and it’s happening in plain sight.

The mental health of young people is a serious cause for concern 200,000 children await mental health treatment, and many regularly skip school. The number of children and young people admitted to hospital with an eating disorder increased by 90% in the five years to 2021. The figure was increased by more than a third (35%) in 2021/22.

More and more children are becoming unhealthy two out of five leave primary school overweight. But most devastating of all is the number one reason for young children being admitted to hospital means extracting rotten teeth – because it is so difficult to get dental treatment from the NHS before tooth decay occurs. And incredible, after 14 years of Tories, the numbers are on the rise life expectancy has come to a standstill.

This is not the result of bad luck, but of design. Not because the Tories wake up every day and want to harm our children, but because of this government’s inability to develop any kind of medium or long-term strategy.

If parents were to treat their own children the way this government has treated the nation’s children, the word used would be “neglect.” Our children are the biggest victims of this kind of “Band-Aid” politics – a pattern of short-term patches when things have reached a crisis point, rather than fixing the fundamental issues.

Rishi Sunak’s refusal, as Chancellor, to fund the Covid recovery plan for schools, proposed by the Tories’ own recovery tsar, is just one concrete example of the Tories’ failure to do their duty to the millions children whose mental wellbeing suffered so much during the lockdown. That’s why change can’t come fast enough.

If we want to reclaim our children’s future, we must reinvigorate our sense of ambition and re-plan for the long term. It will require us to do things differently. That’s what our national health mission is about: getting the NHS back on its feet by reforming the NHS and putting a new focus on prevention. To do this we must bring the NHS closer to the people and use the extraordinary advances in technology to treat patients faster and more effectively.

None of this will happen without a sincere and respectful partnership with professionals and parents to improve the health of our children. That’s why today I’m meeting patients, parents and professionals in the North West as we publish Labour’s children’s health action plan.

First and foremost, it is about ensuring that children receive the care and support they need. It means saving children’s teeth, with a dental plan that gives children access to more emergency appointments – 700,000 extra appointments will be paid for by ending non-domestic tax status for the super-rich. We will also introduce free breakfast clubs at every primary school, so that every child gets a healthy meal to start the day.

Second, we need a generation of happier children. For the health of the country, we must end the mental health crisis. Addressing problems early is essential. That’s why Labor will reduce waiting lists for mental health treatment by placing an additional 8,500 mental health staff into the system. We will also introduce specialist mental health support for children in schools, creating open access to mental health care for every community.

Third, we need to do much more to prevent ill health. We cannot continue to allow vaping to target children and we will end junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed. We also need to ensure that all children at school participate in physical activity. This is a national necessity. Healthy, happy children are not something nice to have, they are a basic right that has economic urgency. We want the next generation to chase their dreams, not the dentist appointment.

If we allow children to grow up overweight, with poor mental health and rotten teeth, we are not only damaging their life chances, but we are also placing a huge burden on the NHS and making the chances of a more prosperous economy much more difficult.

In fact, if healthcare spending explodes to deal with an epidemic of ill health, there will never be money to invest in our schools, roads and vital infrastructure.

I’ve spoken about how Labor has changed and is back at the service of working people, and today’s plan is another important building block in the development of a manifesto that will deliver the hope the country needs and the future our children to deserve. A vote for Labor will be a vote for national renewal, so that 2024 will be the year that British politics fundamentally change. We want a new policy, a policy that serves your interests and those of the next generation.

The future of our children will be on the ballot in this year’s election. This also applies to the future of the NHS, and in my opinion those elections cannot come soon enough. Over the coming months, I will be in every region of the country, sharing our plans and tapping into the expertise in each community. If elected, we intend to make a flying start to get Britain back on track.