Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to engage with (a) parliamentarians and (b) healthcare stakeholders on steps to improve health inequalities.

Our Health Mission in England focuses on addressing the social determinants of health, with the goal of halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions.

We will work across Government and with a wide range of healthcare stakeholders to address the root causes of health inequalities. We will prioritise prevention, shift more care into the community, and intervene earlier in life to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history.

As part of the Government’s five long-term missions, and informed by the Darzi Review, the Government has launched a 10-Year Health Plan to reform the National Health Service and make it fit for the future.

Existing initiatives to reduce inequalities in relation to health services, in England, include NHS England’s Core20PLUS5, which focuses on improving the five clinical areas at most need of accelerated improvement in the poorest 20% of the population, along with other underserved population groups identified at a local level, including groups that share protected characteristics, and socially excluded groups such as people experiencing homelessness.

Future spending will be subject to the outcome of the Spending Review announced by my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.