‘Not enough is being done’ to help the next generation

Princess vows to build on her work improving lives of under-5s and shine light on early years

THE Princess of Wales warns that “not enough is being done” to nurture Britain’s youngest children, as she today vows to use her role to do “everything she can” to protect the next generation.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, she says she is determined to “shine a light” on the “crucial” early years, calling the youngest members of society “our future”. Setting out her mission for the next stage of her life in the Royal family, she speaks of the critical importance of building a “safe and loving world around a child”.

By focusing on the “unique importance” of the first five years of life, she says, it is possible to “create a healthier and happier society for future generations”. She adds: “There are fantastic examples of what can be achieved when we recognise the unique potential of early childhood and build a safe and loving world around a child. But not enough is being done.

“That is why I am determined to continue to shine a light on this issue and to do everything I can to secure much greater focus on those first crucial few years for the youngest members of our society. They are, after all, our future.”

The pledge by the 40-year-old follows a decade of working in the public eye, in which she has focused closely on early years development.

The Telegraph today publishes an investigation into the sector, detailing the challenges it faces and how the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood is working to improve the lives of young children and those who care for them.

It follows research compiled by the centre highlighting a widespread lack of understanding about the importance of good early childhood development.

Experts now argue that early intervention is the key to improving life outcomes for all.

One study by the London School of Economics estimates that it costs £16billion to remedy long-term mental and physical health issues that may have been avoided through intervention in childhood.

The Princess has already undertaken a series of campaigns to raise awareness of the importance of the early years, with a regular programme of engagements designed to boost the sector. She today promises to continue the mission to convince the public of the “unique potential of early childhood” and the chance to “build a safe and loving world around a child”.

Next week, she will take the message to Boston as part of a three-day trip to the United States, focusing on the Prince of Wales’ Earthshot Prize.

In 2023, she is expected to embark on a further awareness-raising campaign as part of the next phase of the project.

Explaining why she has chosen to dedicate her working life in the Royal family to the issue, she said 10 years of speaking to experts had left her “more and more sure of one thing: if we are going to create a healthier and happier society for future generations, we must start by understanding and acknowledging the unique importance the first five years of life”.

“If we are going to tackle the sorts of complex challenges we face today like homelessness, violence and addiction, so often underpinned by poverty and poor mental health, we have to fully appreciate those most preventative years and do everything we can to nurture our children and those who care for them,” she added. Amanda Berry, chief executive of the Royal Foundation, said: “The Princess of Wales has developed a real knowledge and passion for this work over the past decade and has made it clear that in her new role her commitment is as strong as ever.

“There is so much good work going on in the early years sector already – what we can do is shine a light on the issue, draw public attention to it and in doing so create a climate for change and an environment in which babies and very young children are prioritised.”

There was always something perverse about the lockdown slogan: “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives.” The NHS is surely meant to be there to protect us. Yet in the decades since it was founded, the relationship between the nation and its health service has slowly been upended. Instead of the NHS moulding itself to meet the needs of the people, the public has increasingly been required to accommodate the failings of the NHS.

The effects of this are now all too apparent. Despite ballooning budgets, waiting lists have grown to more than seven million; ambulances queue outside hospitals, unable to unload patients or collect new ones; cancer care has reached the point where two-week targets for consultations and two-month targets for treatment are missed by a significant margin.

Behind such statistics are individual lives needlessly cut short. Each one is an avoidable catastrophe. Each one is an indictment of a system that now needs fundamental reappraisal.

Today, with the worst of the pandemic behind us, the NHS continues to gobble up an ever greater proportion of government spending with every day that goes by, yet it seems to do less and less with the money. That is a spending trend that is self-evidently unsustainable, necessitating as it does tax increases that damage growth and real-terms cutbacks in other areas of public expenditure.

However, as readers’ letters to this newspaper attest, while the public is all too aware of the problems now afflicting the NHS, the country’s politicians still shy away from any talk of real change.

This is bizarre. After the financial crisis of 2007-08, in which the bailout of the banks nearly drove the country into bankruptcy, an intense bout of soul-searching followed. The financial system was reformed. New regulation was imposed in an attempt to ensure that such a disaster would never happen again. Nothing similar is happening with the NHS today. The Labour leadership has made some vague noises about the need for reform, but on large parts of the Left even considering the topic is sacrilegious. The Conservatives are too terrified to propose anything other than minor bureaucratic fixes. There is a widespread sense that the problem is just too difficult to solve.

That is not good enough. Indeed, given the crisis now engulfing health provision at every level, silence is the real scandal. If no single party is brave enough to tackle the problem on its own, the time may have come for a crossparty inquiry into the future of the NHS. It has played an immense part in the post-war life of the country, but we cannot go on like this: there is an urgent need to examine from first principles how best to serve patients in the years ahead.

There is a wealth of international evidence that might be considered. Both France and Germany succeed in directing more money into health care with their mixed insurance models, which also happen to be far more accountable than the UK’S state-run monolith. In consequence, many Germans are astonished to learn that we find it impossible to see a GP; the French can rely on a system that is often considered the best in the world.

As our society ages, meanwhile, the basis of health care may also have to change. Some argue that the focus will have to switch to prevention to delay or prevent costly, chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes. If so, people will have to be incentivised to look after themselves better. Surely, private health insurance should attract tax breaks, rather than be punitively taxed as at present.

Whatever solutions might be proposed, however, we know the cost of failing to grip major issues like this. More than a decade ago, an independent commission was set up under Andrew Dilnot to review funding models for social care. Its recommendations – fair contributions from both individual and the state – were widely applauded. Yet nothing was done to legislate for change, and hopes that a political consensus around reform could be built were dashed. The consequence is the social care crisis of today, which is only compounding the NHS’S woes.

The country cannot afford for this to go on any longer. Everyone should be able to access high-quality, affordable health care, when they require it, but the NHS is no longer delivering that. Britain’s politicians must wake up to the need for major change, before it is too late.