Farewell then, UK Health Forum

Despite years of alleged austerity, various pressure groups continue to get money from the state. The nanny state industry has done particularly well from the unwitting taxpayer over the years, so it is always nice to see the government pull the purse-strings shut...

A public health charity providing “vital” services has been forced to close this year after losing most of its government funding.

The UK Health Forum received around £300,000 in government funding last year, a fraction of the over £1m it received in 2016-17. In particular, it lost £200,000 in core funding from the Department of Health and Social Care, which the charity’s latest annual report described as a “significant” blow.

Alas, the article doesn't detail the 'vital services' that have supposedly been supplied by the UK Health Forum. In truth, it is a slush fund for 'public health' activists to lobby for the usual assortment of paternalistic anti-market interventions in lifestyle choices. In recent months, it has promoted higher tobacco taxes, food taxes, advertising bans, sugar taxes and minimum pricing. 

The UK Health Forum received £216,306 from the Department of Health in 2016/17 in addition to £680,000 from Public Health England and an unrestricted grant of £371,660 from the European Commission. Of a total budget of £1,597,619, its state funding amounted to £1,470,626 (92 per cent). A third of its staff earn more than £60,000 per annum.

The UK Health Forum is effectively an arm of the state. It says that it is having to close down in May due to “fewer opportunities to bid for funding for policy work". Good. Taxpayers' money should never be used to pay unaccountable private organisations to do 'policy work'. The sums given to this sockpuppet organisation were obscene and it is appalling that it has taken so long for the government to do something about it.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to the UK Health Forum to do what most charities do and raise money from the general public. They probably know that there is no public demand for their 'vital services' and that they would not raise a brass farthing.

Hopefully, the millions of pounds that these quangocrats would have siphoned from the taxpayer over the next decade will be used to provide healthcare rather than cushy jobs for perennial gravy train occupants like Simon 'caps lock' Capewell and Robin Ireland.