Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of the cost of alcohol use to employers.

The Department estimated the cost of alcohol consumption to society to be £25 billion in 2021. The previous estimate published in the 2012 Government’s Alcohol Strategy was updated to reflect inflation. Using the same approach, the cost of alcohol to the National Health Service would be £4.2 billion in 2021. The specific cost to employers has not been estimated separately.

The Department has initiated a longer-term piece of work to refine the estimated cost of alcohol to society. This work has begun with a review of existing evidence of the impact of alcohol consumption on the National Health Service and labour market productivity.