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The writer is a strategy fellow at Coefficient Giving, a philanthropic funder

A year and a half ago, one of President Joe Biden’s economic advisers, Heather Boushey, was invited to the Labour Party conference to explain what the incoming UK government might learn from the Biden administration. Boushey dutifully reeled off familiar policy priorities, from clean energy investment to boosting manufacturing. Yet one item on her list was more surprising to the British ear — the mass replacement of lead pipes.

Many across the world are aware of the contaminated water case in Flint, Michigan. We might even have noticed the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future, an international initiative to end childhood lead poisoning by 2040, launched that same week by a panel of speakers including Jill Biden. But if Britons thought this was a problem for other countries, rather than the UK, they would be wrong.

The British authorities are dangerously complacent when it comes to lead. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that 168,000 children in the UK are exposed to harmful levels of the toxic metal, which can damage their health as well as causing life-long reductions in IQ and behavioural problems, putting them at risk of being drawn into crime. That equates to 1.1 per cent of all British children, compared with IHME’s estimate of 0.2 per cent in France and 0.1 per cent in the US.

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This should not be a surprise — with its historic lead mines and old building stock, there is every reason to think the problem is worse in Britain than in other countries. Yet while the Biden administration boasted of taking 100 actions to address the issue, the British approach has been to turn a blind eye.

The UK’s lead exposure surveillance system is reactive — children need to be referred for testing. Yet most people do not know they have been exposed. As a result, the UK detects less than 1 per cent of the cases believed to be out there. In the US, by contrast, blood tests for lead are integrated into Medicaid, and 20 states have mandatory testing requirements. In France, children are routinely screened if they fall into a high-risk category — for example, if they live in an old house. In Australia, children are tested if they live near disused lead mines.

It is Britain that is the laggard on lead. The national screening committee is apparently “working on plans for a new review” of lead screening, which does not suggest urgency, especially since it has long since missed targets of revisiting its recommendations by 2022. The UK Health Security Agency launched a pilot last year to trial a novel home-testing approach, but the concern is that the wait for results may delay a national testing programme.

Some reticence is understandable: lead is a hidden problem, easy to ignore, and potentially costly to address. That creates a toxic political dynamic: it is much easier to leave the issue to some future government than confront it head on.

We might hope that Sir Keir Starmer’s commitment to “fixing the foundations” as part of a “decade of national renewal” means his government can be trusted to take the responsible course of action. If not, perhaps it will be moved by less noble motives: averting a scandal. In 2015, a toddler in Leeds died after eating lead paint, prompting local doctors to scale up testing.

We should not have to wait for another tragedy for politicians to take action. A good first step would be to implement a national screening programme, and take quick action to address exposure. This can be as simple as removing contaminated items or sealing lead paint. More expensive interventions would likely be offset by the long-term economic benefits of reducing exposure.

Given the stakes, the UK governments cannot afford to look away or penny-pinch much longer. British children deserve the same protection from lead as their peers in other countries.