Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the extent of alcohol-related harm, and what estimate he has made of the cost to the NHS resulting from alcohol-related harm in each of the last three years for which figures are available.

In 2020, there were 6,980 deaths from alcohol-specific causes registered in England. This is a 20% increase compared with 2019. In England in 2020/21, there was an estimated 248,000 hospital admissions, where the main reason for admission to hospital was attributable to alcohol.

There is no regular annual calculation of the cost of alcohol-related harm to the National Health Service. Such estimates would require detailed disease and procedure data from primary and secondary care, followed by complex analysis to estimate the proportions which can be attributed to alcohol.