The news that Welsh councils will have removed sunbeds from their leisure centres by April 2010 is welcome, though I think it is worth pointing out that both the BMA and much of the media has gone way over-the-top on this issue in recent weeks.
The evidence seems to be that over-exposure to UV radiation on sunbeds is bad for you and can lead to skin cancers. Doctors rightly ask that the public is protected from such dangers and believe that public authorities should not encourage their use.
However, nobody, even the BMA is proposing to ban sunbeds completely. They chiefly want to protect under-18s who are the most-at-risk group by ensuring that the use of a sun bed is not available to them. The campaign is for better regulation and the removal of unstaffed salons.
In this context then, the campaign against local councils seems to be a little unfair. As far as I am aware they only allow supervised access to their sunbeds and are in a position to prevent under-18s using them. They are not after all a private operator dominated by the profit motive.
And that is where the BMA/media campaign is most bizarre. The allegation that Councils ‘profit’ from sunbeds and that “For years these councils have wilfully reneged on their duty of care in the pursuit of profit.” is a gross distortion of the truth worthy only of the basest propagandist. The implication is that officers or Councillors, or indeed the Council itsefl is pocketing this money to spend on luxuries and that the income does not benefit the taxpayer.
The fact is that Council’s are public bodies who provide services. They pay for those services from Government grants, Council Tax, business rates, income from commercial ventures and a number of other sources. Any money they collect providing sunbeds or other activities is used to pay for those services and to keep the Council Tax down. If anybody is ‘profiting’ from sunbeds it is the Council taxpayers, who have to pay less to the Council because of this income.
By all means make the argument that it is inappropriate for a Council to pursue a particular activity but please spare us the emotional blackmail and distortions of the truth that suggest that somehow a Council can profit from that activity in the same way as a business or an individual. Such language is unworthy of the BMA and untrue.
Related posts:
