Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent estimate he has made of the cost to the NHS of treatment of people affected by air pollution and poor air quality.

Whilst there is already evidence of the impacts of air pollution on health, and ongoing work to quantify these impacts, the associated costs to the National Health Service and social care budget are less understood. Public Health England (PHE) has commissioned a consortium led by the UK Health Forum to carry out a project on the estimation of costs to the NHS and social care due to the health impacts of air pollution as part of PHE’s Health Economics Commissioning Framework. The aim is to enable air pollution to be assessed against other public health threats and to support the strategic priority setting process.