Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the analysis by Diabetes UK of the increasing diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and the implications for the National Health Service budget.

In January 2014, NHS England published the Action for Diabetes plan, which sets out how it intends to improve outcomes for people with, and at risk of, diabetes in England. The report acknowledges that type 2 diabetes is estimated to have cost the United Kingdom £8.8 billion in direct costs in 2010-2011 and that these costs are set to rise.

The action that NHS England is taking and will take to drive the prevention of Type 2 diabetes and earlier diagnosis of all diabetes and support better management of diabetes in primary care includes:

- Developing general practitioner contracts and incentives;

- working with primary care services to trial and roll out case-finding and decision-support tools in primary care to support earlier diagnosis; and

working with Public Health England to roll out the NHS Health Check programme.