Why I’m happy to be in the tender care of the 'Nanny State'

Thankfully, I don’t have much experience of doctors. Until I fell ill a little more than six years ago, I’d never spent a day in hospital since I was born. But, being diagnosed with kidney cancer, I was catapulted – dramatically and terrifyingly – into the sequence of emergency treatment, examinations, tests, consultations and, finally, surgery. Throughout this bewildering process, I was given an immense amount of medical and pastoral care by doctors and nurses. And here I am, all these years later, as right as rain.

One thing I learnt sitting opposite various doctors was how refreshingly casual and non-prescriptive they were when it came to ongoing lifestyle advice. The surgeon who whipped out my cancerous kidney said that, on balance, I should probably forego that second bottle of Chardonnay on a night out, and the professor who was in charge of my after-sales care was far more interested in talking about Fulham FC’s woes than telling me how to live my life. Neither gave the impression of being an emissary of the Nanny State.

Doctors I have known in a social context seem equally relaxed when it comes to following the lead of our Chief Medical Officer (CMO). One of my best friends is an eminent rheumatologist and I do not get the sense that, when he approaches the bar, he hears Dame Sally Davies’s words. He doesn’t worry about increasing his cancer risk every time he orders a glass of wine. His more pressing dilemma would be whether to choose red or white.

The term “Nanny State” was coined 50 years ago by the Tory MP Iain Macleod in an article in The Spectator, and now it is used, primarily in rightwing media, as a pejorative term for attempts by central government to cajole citizens into leading healthier, more socially considerate, lives. Any piece of advice from the CMO is portrayed as an unnecessary and unwelcome restriction on personal freedoms. This is arrant nonsense: we are ultimately free to accept or reject any of the communiques that come from Dame Sally’s office and even individual doctors adopt a distanced approach to the CMO’s strictures. All her advisories, it seems to me, are just sensible pointers to all of us if we want to live longer and more healthily, and not to be a burden to our families or the NHS.

Dame Sally (left) may have gone over the top in suggesting that obesity was more of a threat than terrorism (even if it is statistically true), and it may have sounded like scaremongering to suggest that a glass of wine increases a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer. But the much-derided Nanny State should be seen as unreservedly a good thing. It’s why people don’t smoke in public places any longer; it’s why dog mess is rarely seen in our streets; and it’s why supermarkets and food producers take a much more responsible approach to their products. Who do we turn to in times of extremis, after flood or pestilence? Of course: the Nanny State. More power to Dame Sally, I say. I just hope she doesn’t expect me to follow her advice.