The timing could not have been worse. As health secretary Jeremy Hunt was defending his cuts to the public health budget in front of the Commons health select committee (saying that frontline public health services had to look for the same efficiencies as everyone else), Public Health England released a report that pointed out in stark detail the extent of the nation’s junk food eating, binge drinking, chain smoking, couch potato habit.

Poor diet is now the leading contributor to our total disease burden, even ahead of smoking, said PHE. The number of deaths from alcohol-related disease has also soared. Potentially preventable risk factors such as unhealthy eating, obesity, alcohol and smoking together account for some 40 per cent of illness in England. All of which means, as a population, we are living longer – but spending more years in ill-health.

Sooner or later Government has to grasp the nettle on this or the nation will literally eat, smoke and drink itself to death at an unaffordable financial cost to the NHS. An obesity strategy (another one) is promised later this year, which surely ought to include a national healthy living pharmacy service to sit alongside any potential sugary drinks taxes or subsidies on fruit and veg.

One thing is certain: nothing will happen unless ministers think outside of their political silos, take a long-term view and commit some serious investment, both financial and ideological, to tackling these issues. Because at the moment public health provision in this country is a joke, and a sick one at that.