Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for his policies of Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK: registered in 2020 statistics, published by the Office for National Statistics on 7 December 2021.

No specific assessment has been made. However, as part of the NHS Long Term Plan, we have provided national funding to support the implementation of specialist alcohol care teams in the 25% of hospitals with the highest rates of alcohol dependence-related admissions. This is estimated to prevent 50,000 admissions over five years. We are also investing £533 million over three years to support local authority commissioned substance misuse treatment services in England.