Oral Answers

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

2. What steps his Department is taking to reduce health inequalities in deprived areas.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

23. Whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential relationship between poverty and life expectancy.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay)]

The Government are committed to our levelling-up mission to narrow the gap in healthy life expectancy by 2030. That is why, in October, we committed an additional £50 million to 13 local authorities to tackle inequalities and why we are also setting out our plans through the major conditions strategy.

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of targeting health inequalities. Let me give the House a practical example. For lung cancer, patients are 20 times more likely to survive five years if we catch it early rather than late. Before the pandemic, those in the most deprived communities had the worst diagnosis. However, as a result of the targeted action we took with lung cancer check vans, they now have the best early diagnosis, which obviously has a big read-across for the five-year survival rate.

[Gavin Newlands]

The UK ranks 29th in global life expectancy. Professor Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine notes that one reason why the overall increase in life expectancy has been so sluggish in the UK is that it has fallen for poorer groups. The Scottish Government are doing everything they can within devolved competencies to fight poverty—the Scottish child payment and so on—but Westminster controls 85% of social security. What representations has the Secretary of State made to Cabinet colleagues and the Department for Work and Pensions about the damaging effects of their policies on life expectancy?