Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help tackle health inequalities.

The Government is committed to its levelling up mission to narrow the gap in Healthy Life Expectancy by 2030 and increase Healthy Life Expectancy by five years by 2035.  Our approach will continue to focus on supporting people to live healthier lives, helping the National Health Service and social care to provide the best treatment and care for patients and tackling health disparities through national and system interventions such as the NHS’s Core20PLUS5 programme.

On 24 January 2023, we announced our plan to publish the Major Conditions Strategy. This strategy will explore how we can tackle the key drivers of ill-health in England to improve healthy life expectancy, as well as reduce pressure on the NHS and reduce ill-health related labour market inactivity. The strategy will focus on six major groups of conditions, namely cancers, mental health, cardiovascular disease (including stroke and diabetes), dementia, chronic respiratory diseases, and musculoskeletal disorders, that account for approximately 60% of ill-health and early death in England.

We have published our initial report ‘Major Conditions Strategy: Case for change and our strategic framework’ which identifies the importance of tackling inequalities to improve health outcomes, and is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/major-conditions-strategy-case-for-change-and-our-strategic-framework/major-conditions-strategy-case-for-change-and-our-strategic-framework--2

Our intention is to publish the Major Conditions Strategy in early 2024.