CUTS to council budgets for smoking cessation, sexual health and obesity support services are “short-sighted” and will put additional pressure on the NHS, Labour has said in advance of its analysis being published today.

Money spent on public health services in England between 2013/14 and 2016/17 has been cut by 36 per cent, the party’s study of figures from the House of Commons Library shows.

Budgets for sexual health promotion, prevention and advice were cut by 29 per cent per head, down to £1.23 in 2016/17.

Spending on specialist drug and alcohol misuse services for children and young people was reduced by 25 per cent, while expenditure for treatment for drug misuse in adults was cut by 21 per cent. Adult obesity service expenditure per head fell by 7 per cent.

Further cuts are expected on all services between 2017/18 and 2018/19.  

Labour said that these cuts follow damning evidence in recent months showing that drug-related deaths are at an all-time high, rates of smoking among pregnant women have risen for the first time on record and obesity rates among children aged 10 to 11 have hit a record high.

Shadow health and social care secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “Not only are these cuts completely misguided, they also shamefully mean some of the most vulnerable in society are failed again as they go without treatment and support.

“These latest cuts — part of a package of £1 billion worth of cuts to health services next year — must be reversed in the imminent NHS long-term plan.”

Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe condemned years of “salami-slicing” of public health budgets that would result in a higher likelihood that preventable health issues become bigger problems down the line.

He said: “There needs to be a twin-pronged approach to kick-start a renaissance in these services — a restoration of the cuts to local authority public health budgets in England and a vigorous recruitment campaign to boost the numbers of health visitors, school nurses and community nurses to carry out such programmes.

“Tory ministers need to shrug off the cloak of short term penny-pinching complacency that currently engulfs them on public health.”

Ian Hudspeth, chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, also urged the government to reverse the cuts.