Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the decision to cease updates to fatty liver disease data on Office for Health Improvement and Disparities Fingertips profiles on trends in the level of those diseases.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) ceased to update non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) hospital admissions rates and premature deaths, in people aged under 75 years old, on the Fingertips profiles in December 2025. These only measure the most serious, and a small proportion of cases of the disease, and did not relate directly to the disease prevalence, level of disease, within the population.

These are not accurate measures of NAFLD within the population, a condition that is linked to obesity and which can be prevented and treated at early stages with healthy lifestyle changes. The latest reported data for England showed that 345 deaths due to NAFLD in 2023 and 3,126 hospital admissions in 2022/23. There is no data measuring the prevalence of NAFLD.

The decision to cease updates occurred after a process that examined data usage, potential duplication, and relative impact of the indicator on disease prevention and monitoring.

We concluded that the cessation of publication of these indicators would have limited impact on our efforts to monitor trends on the level of these diseases within the population.

Alternative data sources to monitor the population risk of this condition include measures of obesity, physical activity, and nutrition which continue to be published by OHID.