Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to develop an alcohol dependency (a) prevention and (b) recovery strategy.

There are no current plans to develop a standalone alcohol dependency prevention and recovery strategy. The Government has already set out measures to reduce and prevent alcohol harm through the green paper ‘Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s’ and the NHS Long Term Plan.

The Government published its 10-year Drug Strategy in December 2021. While the focus of the strategy is drugs, commissioning and delivery of drug and alcohol treatment services are integrated in England. This means that implementation of the strategy will also benefit people seeking alcohol treatment through mechanisms such as new commissioning standards, and new investment to rebuild local authority commissioned substance misuse treatment services in England.