Dear Prime Minister and Chancellor,

The Covid Pandemic has highlighted the best of the nation: our levels of compassion, the courage of our keyworkers, the sacrifices we are all willing to make for the good of others. However, it has also exposed how many are struggling to get by and having to do without the basics needed to be able to live a healthy life.

We have to build back better. We cannot have a Britain where the odds of surviving a pandemic are stacked against those in particular socio-economic or ethnic groups or people with disabilities and where children go hungry. And we cannot head into a major recession without ensuring that at the very least everyone’s basic needs are met. After the Second World War we built a land fit for heroes and we need to do the same now. 

Polling conducted by Opinium, for the cross-party think tank Compassion in Politics, shows that 76% of the public would support a measure - a Covid Legacy Act -  that ensured that everyone’s basic needs are met. 

As we emerge from the crisis we have a unique opportunity to level up. We the undersigned call on the government to use this historic moment to shift to a health and wellbeing economy where everybody has the basics needed to be able to achieve good health.

Prioritising health and wellbeing across all departments would mark a new era in the UK’s history as well as leaving it with lower health costs and the resilience to better meet the challenges that lie ahead.