Jo Cox Commission calls for national strategy to combat loneliness

Christmas, so the song goes, can be the most wonderful time of the year, but it can also the loneliest. Now the government has been urged to adopt a national strategy to tackle what’s being called a “loneliness epidemic”. A cross-party commission set up by the MP Jo Cox before she was murdered says that being lonely is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. New projects are in the pipeline, including lunch clubs and schemes to match volunteers with lonely people in their area. But what more needs to be done?