Stunted

The Labour Party has put forward a mixed bag of 'public health' policies for children, including some sort of national tooth-brushing scheme. It was launched with a bunch of half-truths and falsehoods about British children being stunted and fat which I have examined for Spiked.

 

Labour wants to create a ‘national supervised toothbrushing programme for three- to five-year-olds’ to be paid for by taxing non-doms. Some people will argue that teaching kids to brush their teeth is the responsibility of parents. Others will argue that some parents are stupid and feckless. Still others will ask how the relatively small sum of money that will come from abolishing non-dom status is able to cover an endless succession of spending pledges.

Learning to brush your teeth is more useful than a lot of things young children are taught at school. And Starmer is right to identify it as the best and perhaps only way to prevent tooth decay. His scheme is only going to cost £9million a year and it won’t infringe on the rights of adults, so I don’t really care either way. I am more concerned by Starmer’s support for the incremental ban on smoking and the ban on so-called junk-food advertising. I am also concerned that Starmer appears to believe that British children are a bunch of podgy, stunted troglodytes with rotten teeth, as this is simply not true.

 

Do read it all.