Frank Dobson: "inequality is to blame"

The Health Secretary discusses the North-South divide on BBC Radio Dur: 3'00"

Widening Variations in Life Span

According to the report, if you come from Glasgow, Manchester or Birmingham, you are less likely to reach retirement age than people from small towns in Kent, Surrey or Hertfordshire.

Overall, death rates among the under-65s have been falling steadily. But since 1981, the report says, there has been a greater improvement in some areas than in others, and this is creating a widening north-south divide.

People in areas with the highest death rates are now nearly twice as likely to die prematurely as those in the healthiest areas.

And although infant and child health across Britain has improved substantially, there are places where death rates have actually risen in the last 15 years. The highest death rates, for children and adults, were found mainly in northern and urban areas.

The report says the inequality it found is the greatest since local records were first collated in 1951.

The Health Secretary Frank Dobson blamed higher mortality rates in the North on inequality due to poor housing and rampant unemployment. He told the BBC's Today programme that the Labour Government was putting in place programmes to tackle both these issues.

Mr Dobson said he did not think anybody had been in doubt that poverty was linked to poor health.

"It's not really a north-south divide," he asserted. "The prosperous folks in Harrogate have pretty long life expectations. It's people in downtown Leeds or Bradford or Manchester who don't."

Mr Dobson said Labour's pledges would help tackle the problem. These included allowing councils to spend money from the sale of council houses to build new homes - because a principal cause of ill health was poor housing.

He said the Government's programme to get people back to work would also help - a middle aged man who lost his job doubled his chances of dying in the next five years.

The proposed national minimum wage would also help the poorest, who now could not afford decent food.

Mr Dobson also underlined Government action against smoking, particularly its efforts to stop tobacco companies "recruiting" children to the habit. He noted that the price of cigarettes was raised in the Budget and that tobacco advertising would be banned.

Dr Dorling: life patterns "need to be investigated"

The report, called "Death in Britain: How local mortality rates have changed: 1950s to 1990s", was researched by Dr Daniel Dorling of Bristol University and published by the Rowntree Foundation.

Dr Dorling said: "This study does not seek to speculate on the reasons why divisions between different parts of the country have become so pronounced. However, it does seem that the trend has occurred too quickly to be explained simply by a changing distribution of wealth, changing causes of death, or as a reflection of past health inequalities. These patterns of varying life chances need to be investigated - and that is likely to prove a harder task than describing them."

Dr Dorling examined statistics for death rates of infants, adolescents and adults by sex throughout England Scotland and Wales.

The figures showed that:

• Glasgow residents were 66% more likely to die prematurely than people living in rural Dorset, and 31% more likely than those living in Bristol
• A baby girl born in Leeds is more than twice as likely to die in the first year of life than an infant girl growing up in a town in Dorset
• Death rates for baby boys in Blackburn, Halifax and Preston are almost double the national average
• Eight times as many boys aged one to four died in Manchester between 1990 and 1992 as died in rural Gloucestershire.
• Early childhood mortality rates for boys in Dewsbury, Bethnal Green, Manchester and St Helens have doubled since 1981
• There has been an increase in deaths among pre-school girls in Birkenhead, Manchester, and the Isle of White
• Mortality rates for boys and girls aged five to 14 increased during the 1980s in Salford; rural Carmarthenshire; St Helens, on Merseyside; Nottingham and Bethnal Green
• Mortality rates for girls in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, have recently risen.

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