Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the number and proportion of people who drink more than the recommended level of alcohol.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Department.

However, this data is available from the Health Survey for England and is published by NHS England. The latest available estimate is for 2021 and shows that 21.3% of the adult population in England drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week on a regular basis, which is above the United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ lower risk guideline. Full data is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/health-survey-for-england/2021/health-survey-for-england-2021-data-tables