Andrew Lansley forced to make U-turn on public health campaign cuts. Health secretary attacked after calls to smoking, drugs and lifestyle helplines plunged following spending freeze.
The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has been forced into a major U-turn on funding for public health campaigns, after evidence emerged that the spending freeze had cost lives.
An extra £15m has now been set aside for promoting the government's anti-smoking website and £14m will be made available for a campaign promoting healthy living.
The decision has come in response to a damning Department of Health (DoH) report on the consequences of the government's decision to "all but cease" publicly-funded advertising last year.
The DoH found that the number of people ringing the drug abuse support helpline, Frank, had fallen by 22%, that visits to the Smokefree website had fallen by 50% and that the number of people joining the government's lifestyle website was down by two-thirds.
Source: Daniel Boffey, guardian.co.uk, 28/05/2011
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