Excess Deaths in Private Homes

Lord Allan of Hallam Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, we are fortunate to have in the Office for National Statistics a source of trusted data to inform our policy deliberations. It provided essential data about excess deaths during the pandemic, and we should equally reflect on what this data says about the health of our nation post-pandemic. There is clearly a range of potential factors that could have led to the excess deaths, as the Minister has outlined, but it is really in the public interest to test all those hypotheses and establish any causality. Can the Minister commit the department to carrying out research, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, asked for, into any potential link between the pressures that we know about on the ambulance service and the excess deaths at home?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Again, I spoke further to Sir Chris Whitty exactly on this. He writes an annual report on this. We will be doing so in the same way and looking at all the factors.