Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help reduce the number of people needing treatment for alcohol use disorders.

The Government is committed to reducing the number of people in ill health, with the shift from treatment to prevention being a key priority.

Action to prevent harms from alcohol feature in multiple current strategies and plans. The recently published National Cancer Plan reiterated the commitment made in Fit for the Future: 10-Year Health Plan for England, to strengthen and expand on existing voluntary guidelines for alcohol labelling by introducing a mandatory requirement for alcoholic drinks to display consistent nutritional information and health warning messages. The Men’s Health Strategy outlines the impact alcohol can have on men’s health, and several initiatives to address this, including piloting a new brief intervention to target the rise in cardiovascular disease deaths from combined alcohol and cocaine use among older men.

Validated alcohol risk screening tools are being built into our new digital resources. The healthy choices quiz, launched in November, includes making health choices around alcohol and users receive tailored advice about reducing health risk from alcohol based on their input about their drinking. The healthy choices quiz and further information on its introduction is available, respectively, at the following two links:

https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/healthy-choices-quiz/?WT.mc_ID=PaidSearch_Brand&wt.tsrc=paid_search&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22919087208&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpojBzKydkwMV4KRQBh2zgSZFEAAYASAAEgKe3PD_BwE

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-to-benefit-from-new-health-and-wellbeing-quiz

In addition, the NHS Health Check, designed to assess the top risk factors for cardiovascular disease, includes an alcohol assessment, and can refer people to further support for their alcohol use where appropriate.