Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the implications for his policies of the paper Associations between air pollution and multimorbidity in the UK Biobank: A cross-sectional study.

No specific assessment has been made. However, the developing evidence on this issue is kept under review and this paper will be taken into account as part of the overall evidence base.

The UK Health Security Agency’s Cleaner Air Programme is working to increase and improve awareness and understanding of the evidence base on the health impacts of air pollution in the United Kingdom, including its links with multimorbidity and mental health. There is ongoing collaborative work across Government to address these health impacts.