Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve the collection and publication of national data on drowning incidents, including demographic information, to inform targeted prevention policies.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
The Lord Kamall
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
22 September 2025
Dear Lord Kamall,
As Acting National Statistician, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what steps are being taken to improve the collection and publication of national data on drowning incidents, including demographic information, to inform targeted prevention policies (HL10639).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) produces mortality statistics using information provided on death certificates. The ONS codes cause of death using the International Cause of Death (ICD-10). The ICD-10 codes for accidental drowning and submersion are W65 to W74.
The ONS publishes statistics on mortality by specific cause each year, in our Deaths
registered summary statistics [1]. Numbers of deaths for 2024 were published on 20 May 2025, and age-standardised mortality rates will be published on 9 October 2025. Table 3 in that publication presents deaths by specific causes, including accidental drowning and submersion, by sex and five-year age bands. Those published 2024 figures by age and sex are summarised with wider age bands in the table below.
The ONS is currently exploring methods to improve the timeliness of our mortality statistics. We launched a consultation earlier this year asking users about the value of reporting death occurrences rather than registrations for suicide statistics [2], and the same questions are being considered for wider mortality outputs too. This includes assessing the accuracy of “nowcasting”: estimating the number of recent death occurrences, by cause, using factors such as the number registered in the past week and trends in registration delays for that cause.
Death certification reform was also implemented in September 2024 [3], which included adding an ethnicity field to the death certificate for the first time in England and Wales. This aims to improve future reporting of deaths by ethnicity and will enable us to produce further demographic breakdowns in future.
Yours sincerely,
Emma Rourke
Table 1: Number of deaths registered by sex, age group and ONS short list of cause of death code, 2024, England and Wales
ICD-10 code | Underlying cause | Sex | All ages | Aged under 1 year | Aged 01 to 19 years | Aged 20 to 64 years | Aged 65 years and above |
W65 to W74 | Accidental drowning and submersion | Males | 213 | 1 | 23 | 129 | 60 |
W65 to W74 | Accidental drowning and submersion | Females | 83 | 1 | 12 | 38 | 32 |
Notes:
1. Figures are for deaths registered rather than deaths occurred. For more information see our Impact of registration delays publication [4].
2. Figures include non-residents.
3. Based on underlying cause of death.
4. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) short list for cause of death is based on a standard tabulation list developed by the ONS, in consultation with the Department of Health (now the Department of Health and Social Care, DHSC). For more information about the codes included, see our User guide to mortality statistics [5].
5. Figures for deaths aged under 1 year exclude deaths under 28 days, which are registered with separate neonatal death certificate from which it is not possible to assign an underlying cause of death. For more information see the childhood mortality section of our User guide to mortality statistics.
[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/d eathsregisteredsummarystatisticsenglandandwales
[2]https://consultations.ons.gov.uk/external-affairs/user-requirements-for-official-suicide-statistics/
[4]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/im pactofregistrationdelaysonmortalitystatisticsinenglandandwales/latest
[5]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/methodolo gies/userguidetomortalitystatisticsjuly2017#ons-short-list-of-cause-of-death
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of days of work that were lost due to asthma in the UK in each year since 2010 for which there are data available.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
The Lord Kamall
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
21 March 2025
Dear Lord Kamall,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking for an estimate of the number of days of work that were lost due to asthma in the UK in each year since 2010 for which there are data available (HL5962).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) collects information on the labour market status of individuals through the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is a survey of people resident in households in the UK. The LFS also collects information on whether respondents have missed days off work due to illness and/or injury.
Unfortunately, we do not collect information regarding the type of sickness at a level of detail to identify those suffering from asthma specifically, but we can provide the number of working days lost due to respiratory conditions.
We publish estimates of the number of working days lost through sickness absence, including the number of working days lost due to respiratory conditions, in our Sickness absence in the UK labour market: 2022 article1. This article is due to be updated to include 2023 and 2024 estimates on 1 May 2025. This update will also include revisions to estimates from 2019 to 2022. We will send the updated data to you once it has been published.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
Table 1 contains LFS estimates of the number, and percentage, of working days lost due to respiratory conditions from 2012 to 2022, the latest data currently available.
Table 1: Number and percentage of working days lost due to respiratory conditions, between 2012 and 2022.
| Number of working days lost due to respiratory conditions (millions) | Percentage of working days lost due to respiratory conditions (% of all working days lost) |
2022 | 16.2 | 8.7 |
2021 | 10.0 | 6.7 |
2020 | 6.4 | 5.5 |
2019 | 5.6 | 4.0 |
2018 | 3.9 | 2.8 |
2017 | 3.7 | 2.8 |
2016 | 5.4 | 3.9 |
2015 | 5.4 | 3.9 |
2014 | 6.8 | 5.0 |
2013 | 5.8 | 4.4 |
2012 | 4.4 | 3.3 |