Dear Andy Burnham

A word on health and wellbeing

I will keep this short, I hear you are quite busy. Although I have included some links to further reading for the bedside pile if you have a spare moment or two.

I wanted to outline the key arguments in favour of you focussing your premiership on health and wellbeing.

1. Political experience. You will be the first post-war Prime Minister to have previously served as a Health Secretary. Prior to the war - and the founding of the NHS - Neville Chamberlain was Minister of Health (which was sort of the equivalent post at the time) before becoming PM. Anyway, let’s not get sidetracked by other relevant lessons we may wish to draw from his leadership. You received the landmark Marmot Review on health inequalities and published a white paper proposing a National Care Service. You could pick up the baton from yourself and use the power of Number 10 to drive progress on these fronts.

2. You get it. I found a quote of yours…“Wellbeing shouldn’t be a privilege, it’s something that should be there for everybody.” I like it. As Greater Manchester Mayor you have been put health inequalities, social determinants and prevention at the core of the health devolution agenda (you could argue it was an essential element of Manchesterism) and backed brilliant initiatives like Live Well.

3. Prioritisation. The founding father of the NHS Nye Bevan (you will be familiar with his work) famously said: "the language of priorities is the religion of socialism." You cannot do everything, pick a big theme, say ‘health and wellbeing’ for the sake of argument, and frame your agenda around it. You could even arrange the architecture of government to serve this goal. Set a new ‘health and wellbeing test’ for every policy and spending decision to judge whether the actions your government takes will actually improve our health and makes us feel happier with life.

4. Growth. A lot of people will judge you on GDP. Now it is not the best measure of a successful society but politics requires a degree of realism as we know. And of course creating jobs and valuable (in both senses of the term) products and services is pretty important. Actually prioritising wellbeing (mentioned above) could help with this. Happier workers are more productive and less likely to leave their job. Yet, wellbeing is never given much attention as part of a serious growth strategy. You could add it in. The charity I work for, the World Wellbeing Movement, put in a submission to the Business and Trade Committee, which you may find useful in understanding the evidence.

5. Electoral success. Now you do not need much advice about this having recently won a great victory, well done on that. I am sure your mind will be turning to the next General Election (at least a bit…). A couple of brilliant economists called Lord Richard Layard and Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve (they founded the World Wellbeing Movement) wrote a great book on wellbeing and policy which includes a chapter on voting. Interestingly it increasingly looks as though incumbent governments are more likely to get re-elected if they boost wellbeing. Worth a read.

Let me end with another quote. This is a favourite of mine - “The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.” You guessed it, that was Harold Wilson. How about making your moral crusade health and wellbeing?