Alcohol and Cancer

Ashley Dalton Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart, as ever. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) for securing this important debate during Alcohol Awareness Week. The Government recognise that for too long there has been an unwillingness to lead on issues such as alcohol harm. It is unacceptable that alcohol-specific deaths are at the highest rates on record, having increased dramatically during the pandemic.

As my hon. Friend stated, alcohol is a type 1 carcinogen, meaning there is strong evidence that drinking alcohol can cause several types of cancer, as well as contributing to more than 200 other health conditions, including liver disease, high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease. That places an incredible and preventable pressure on our NHS: in England alone, of more than 1 million hospital admissions last year, 103,000 were due to alcohol-related cancers.

Today, we have heard from many colleagues about the variety of issues that alcohol can cause. The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) talked about the cost to Government and to society, which I will address later; the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) discussed information and the importance of education; my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) mentioned the real impacts on communities and families in the north-east; my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Bellshill (Frank McNally) talked about how important early intervention is; and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) raised the links to poverty and under-investment.

As for the impacts, alcohol kills. Last year, in England, more than 22,600 deaths were alcohol related, with more than 8,000 entirely due to alcohol—an all-time high, with rates still increasing by 4% each year. The rate of alcohol-related deaths is 1.7 times higher in the most deprived local authorities, meaning that alcohol is a major contributor to the levels of health inequality in this country. Alcohol also kills young—in 2015, in England, an estimated 167,000 years of working life were lost due to alcohol-related deaths. That amounts to about 16% of all working years lost.

The hon. Member for East Londonderry asked about the cost to Government and society. Alcohol harms us massively. The estimated annual cost of alcohol-related harms in England is £27 billion, driven by the impact of alcohol-related illnesses and injuries on NHS services and alcohol’s high contribution to levels of economic inactivity, crime and disorder. Each year, £13 billion is raised in tax revenue from alcohol.

The guideline on alcohol consumption produced by the four nations’ chief medical officers advises that drinking any level of alcohol increases the risk of a range of cancers, including mouth, bowel, stomach, liver and breast cancers, and that the risk of harm increases with the frequency and quantity of alcohol consumed. In 2020, alcohol was estimated to have caused about 17,000 new cases of cancer in the UK. One study estimated that between 2015 and 2035 there would be 135,000 cancer deaths due to alcohol in England. In terms of cancer risk, drinking a bottle of wine is the equivalent of smoking five cigarettes for a man, and 10 cigarettes for a woman.

We also cannot overlook the impact that being exposed to multiple risk factors has in increasing the risk of developing certain conditions. For instance, the risk of developing head and neck cancer is 3.8 times higher among those who drink and smoke than those who partake in only one of those behaviours. That is why a holistic approach is needed to our health, with people supported to address all risk factors for poor health together.

We are continuing to invest in local alcohol treatment services to make sure that people have access to the treatment they need. While those services are primarily focused on supporting people to become free from alcohol dependence, they are also an important setting for providing health information for people with alcohol dependence, identifying alcohol-related health conditions and ensuring that people can access specialist assessment and care.

In the 12 months to February 2025, nearly 140,000 people were treated for their alcohol needs—9,000 more than in the previous year. In the coming months, the Department of Health and Social Care will publish the first ever UK guidelines on alcohol treatment. The guidelines will include recommendations on healthcare assessments for alcohol-related conditions and will strengthen pathways between specialist alcohol and drug treatment services and the wider healthcare system.

The incidence of liver cancer has increased by 50% over the past decade and is expected to rise further. A large percentage of liver cancer is caused by alcohol-related liver disease, which in its early stages has no outward symptoms. If we can find liver disease by screening at-risk populations, there is an opportunity to halt its progress and monitor for the development of cancer. To identify people at high risk of liver cancer due to liver cirrhosis or advanced fibrosis, the NHS in England has been piloting community liver health checks in 20 areas, and liver primary care case-finding pilots across 12 primary care networks. Those pilot sites have screened nearly 125,000 people, and over 9,000 of them have been enrolled in liver cancer surveillance.

As the Secretary of State has made clear since we came into power, one of the three big shifts that we want to see in the NHS is a shift from treatment to prevention. The complex challenge of cancer prevention will not be solved by a single solution.

[Grahame Morris]

I am listening intently, but I may have missed an important point, so I wonder whether it would bear repeating. The Minister indicated that a treatment framework will be published very shortly. Will that be informed by an alcohol strategy that the Government will also produce? We have not had one since 2012.

[Ashley Dalton]

A number of hon. Members have asked about a national alcohol strategy. We are continuing to work across Government to understand what other measures might be needed to reduce the negative impact of excessive alcohol consumption. I meet regularly with Ministers from across Government to discuss how we take that forward.

The drug and alcohol area of work is led by the Home Office. There are no plans to introduce such a strategy at this stage, but I expect further information on how we will deal with alcohol prevention and cancer in the national cancer plan, which, as I was just about to state, the Government will publish later this year. This plan will build on the progress of the 10-year health plan, which was published last week, and will continue the work to shift from treatment to prevention, including for alcohol-related cancer risks.

We are taking steps now. The 10-year health plan for England includes an important commitment to ensure that health warnings and nutritional information are legally required on alcohol labels. That is a crucial step in supporting people to make healthier choices when it comes to alcohol. There is international support for that approach. The World Health Organisation’s “Global alcohol action plan 2022-2030” recommends that countries should implement labelling requirements to display relevant information to support health protection.

Despite the fact that alcohol is a group 1 carcinogen, alcohol labels are currently required to display far less information than those for food, soft drinks, alcohol-free products or tobacco. We know that voluntary regulation does not lead to consistently good practice in alcohol labelling, so we need to ensure that there is a legal requirement to display certain information on alcohol products. We also know that consumers want more information on alcohol labels: a 2021 survey showed that 75% wanted unit information, 61% wanted calorie information, and 53% wanted sugar content to be displayed. Those results are supported by those of the 2023 alcohol toolkit study, which found that public support for health warning labels was 61.5%, and that 78% supported nutritional information labelling.

There is widespread awareness among people in the UK that smoking causes cancer. That information is important to supporting behavioural change. But public awareness that alcohol is carcinogenic is far too low. In a 2016 study of 2,100 adults, only 13% named cancer as a health risk from hazardous drinking. Another recent international study found that only 15% were aware that alcohol can cause breast cancer.

We will soon share details of our consultation to determine the best ways to get the necessary information to consumers. We welcome the support and input of parliamentarians in taking that important piece of work forward, but let me be absolutely clear: we will consult on how we will implement mandatory labelling, not whether we will do so. This Government are determined to introduce mandatory labelling for alcohol.

We have also discussed various other options available for controlling alcohol consumption. My hon. Friends the Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor), for Easington and for Lancaster and Wyre talked about minimum unit pricing. The Government are acutely aware of the cost of living pressures being felt by families and individuals, and the difficult economic conditions facing the country. Although interventions that affect the price of alcohol have been shown to be effective at directly reducing alcohol harms, the Government have chosen not to pursue policies that could exacerbate economic issues at this time, although we will continue to keep those options under consideration.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is the branch of Government responsible for advertising and marketing. The Advertising Standards Authority is responsible for regulating advertising through codes set by the Committee of Advertising Practice and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice. Those codes are enforced by the ASA, include specific rules about how alcohol can be advertised, and recognise the social imperative of ensuring that alcohol advertising is responsible.

We will continue to work across Government to consider what other measures might be needed to reduce the negative impact that excessive alcohol consumption has on health, crime and the economy. The Government are committed to shortening the amount of time spent in ill health, and to preventing premature deaths. The commitment to labelling in the 10-year plan is a crucial first step to support people to make healthier choices about alcohol. It is the beginning, not the end. We will continue to work across Government to consider what other measures might be needed to reduce the negative impact of excessive alcohol consumption.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre also talked about public health as a licensing objective. Evidence to support its impact is, at the moment, somewhat limited, but we continue to work with the Home Office to consider how best to use licensing powers to support local leaders to address alcohol-related harms. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Easington for his leadership on this important issue. Officials are considering that report from the APPG on drugs, alcohol and justice. I recently met the Minister for Policing and Crime Prevention, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), who leads on alcohol and drugs policy across Government. I will soon meet Lord Timpson to discuss those areas and their impact on prisons. We are working across Government. I would be happy to meet the APPG, as I have previously agreed. Diary pressures are very high at the moment, but I am confident that we will soon find time to do that.

We have also talked about preventing under-age drinking, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Bellshill. There is a commitment in the 10-year plan to make the sale of alcohol-free drinks also illegal to under-18s, ensuring that no-alcohol and low-alcohol products do not become a gateway to standard-strength alcoholic drinks. On alcohol misuse and mental health support, raised by the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), we totally agree on the importance of mental health support. The Government are committed to recruiting 8,500 new mental health workers, and have already recruited 6,700.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), cheerily reminded us that all activities are risky. She talked of improving the understanding of alcohol dependency. She focused broadly on alcohol use, but did not necessarily mention cancer. To avoid digressing from the debate, I commit to writing to her further on the areas she raised more generally on alcohol policy.

I thank everyone for their contributions to this important debate. We will continue to work across Government to reduce the negative impact that excessive alcohol consumption has on health—including cancer—crime and the economy.