[longer Report makes it official. the Report -…]

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longer Report makes it official.

the Report - on an August Bank Holiday!

But this Tory attempt at a cover-up backfired and led to a wide discussion of the Report at union and Labour Party professional. The child of a conferences in 1981 and its skilled or white-collar worker publication as a paperback a is 'only' twice as likely to die. year later. This tremendous difference The Black Report's recom- carries on well into adult life mendations now form the - working class boys are ten basis of Labour's policy for the times more likely to die from NHS. accidents involving fire, falls The Report's main finding or drowning, than upper class was not only that 30 years after boys. the NHS was set up to provide Don't worry too much equal care for all, the profes- though - if you make it to sional and executive classes your forties and fifties your (1.e. the bosses) were getting a chances begin to even up. That better deal than manual and is unless you're daft enough to White-collar workers. Black be born in Knowsley, Hackney also found that the gap or Salford. It comes as no surbetween them is getting prise that, excluding , inner worse. receive more specialist attention; occupy more of the beds in better equipped and better staffed hospitals..." (p.76).

They also spend longer talking to their GPs (after all they probably play golf together).

Internationally, British death rates compare badly with Holland and Scandinavia and France and Germany are beginning to open up a gap. This reflects health spending per head of government population — £123 in Britain in 1977, but 2200 in France and £450 in Sweden.

What must really have hit home with the Tories was that the Report points the finger at And because working class children get a poorer education than the middle class, they are less able to use the NHS to their advantage when they do fall ill.

If every smoker were to give up smoking for example, it would probably cause the single biggest drop in the working class death rate possible. Why don't they? The report points out that they are not likely to unless the stress which leads to smoking (and drinking and taking valium) is removed.

In particular, Black proposes 'an anti-poverty strategy' which would increase social spending by over £300 Above: builders' pickets clash with police outside Thomas's hospital, London. Hospital building has cut back severely. St been