Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of people currently damaged by alcohol and drug abuse in the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom Drug Policy Commission collect data on the numbers affected by drug addiction and publish their findings in their report Supporting the Supporters: families of drug misusers 2009. The findings estimate that nearly 1.5 million people are affected by drug addiction in their families, mostly in poor communities.

Estimates in the Office of National Statistics report ‘Deaths Related to Drug Poisoning in England and Wales, 2012 and Alcohol-related deaths in the UK, registered in 2012' showed that there were 1,496 drug misuse deaths in England.

In England, data on the number of adults who report some signs of drug or alcohol dependence is published by theHealth and Social Care Information Centre, in the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity in England, 2007 report. The report includes information on rates of dependency and access to treatments. This data will be updated in 2014 and will be available in 2017.

The Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University, published on 25 March, ‘Updating England-specific Alcohol-attributable Fractions', with revised estimates for England showing that over 21,000 people died in 2010 and that over 900,000 people were admitted to hospital in 2010-11 for alcohol-related causes.

Public health prevention, treatment and care in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is a matter for those Devolved Administrations. Each country maintains its own information. For example:

- In 2012-13 there were 5,683 drug related discharges from a general acute hospital in Scotland (a European age-sex-standardised rate (EASR) of 107 discharges per 100,000 population). The National Records of Scotland reported that there were 581 drug related deaths in 2012 in Scotland.

- In 2012-13 there were 35,926 alcohol related discharges from a general acute hospital in Scotland (a European age-sex-standardised rate (EASR) of 693 discharges per 100,000 population).

- There were 25,000 referrals for drug and alcohol misuse recorded in 2012 -13 on the Welsh National Database for Substance Misuse.

- Data on the number of drug - related deaths in Northern Ireland is collected by the General Register Office and published in their annual report. The most recent estimates show that there were 110 drug related deaths in 2012.

- Data on the number of drug and alcohol – related hospital admissions is collected by the Hospital Inpatient System in Northern Ireland. The most recent estimates show that there were 15,701 drug and alcohol admissions to hospitals in Northern Ireland.

Data may not be comparable across the UK in all cases.