Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps is he taking to investigate the potential merits of social prescribing in combatting loneliness.

We recognise the importance of social prescribing in tackling loneliness. Since the launch of the strategy, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have made great progress in improving the provision of social prescribing and there is growing evidence that social prescribing can help to reduce people's loneliness. Funding for social prescribing link workers through primary care has resulted in a robust support offer for recruitment, training, workforce development and service delivery. As of October 2022 there are 2,793 FTE Social Prescribing Link Workers in post and over 1.3 million referrals have been made to Social Prescribing as of November 2022.