ONS: UK Life Expectancy

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rooker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the publication by the Office for National Statistics National life tables—life expectancy in the UK: 2017 to 2019, published on 24 September.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, life expectancy is at its highest level ever, but we have seen improvements stall and we expect to see adverse impacts from Covid on life expectancy data in the future. Covid has shone a light on the differences in health outcomes between communities; that is why the Government remain committed to levelling up health outcomes so that everyone can enjoy a long and healthy life.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, my Question has nothing to do with Covid. What are the reasons life expectancy improvements have slowed in comparison to the previous decade? The flatlining in the ONS statistics, at figure 1, is a worry because it is a trend of 10 years, and the Marmot review in February said that this had not happened since the year 1900. For women in the most deprived areas, life expectancy actually fell between 2010 and 2018, so why has there been no national health inequality strategy since 2010? Why has that disappeared off the face of our policy-making? When does the Minister expect the flatline to go back up again?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is entirely right that this stalling of the life expectancy curve is extremely worrying, and he is right to emphasise the disappointing results in deprived communities, where, as he says, we are going backwards instead of forwards. Covid has shown how that has a huge impact on the resilience of the nation’s public health. The Government are committed to this agenda—we published a prevention Green Paper and we are committed to building a strategy out of that Green Paper, and since then we have done work on better health, on obesity and on other areas of life expectancy—but I agree with him that more can and should be done.