Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people in St Helens North constituency are identified as suffering from long-term illnesses; and what the comparable average figure is in the (a) North West and (b) UK.

In 2012, the Department estimated that approximately 15 million people in England are living with a long term condition.

Some information on long term conditions can be provided at a local and national level through interrogation of Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) and Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) data. However conditions would need to be specified to enable these data to be extracted. Both QOF and HES data can be found on the Health and Social Care Information website at the following links:

www.hscic.gov.uk/hes

http://qof.hscic.gov.uk/