Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of drug and alcohol addiction treatment services in a) Lewisham North constituency, b) London and c) England.

Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is committed to ensuring that anyone with a drug or alcohol problem can access the help and support they need.

Local authorities are responsible for commissioning alcohol and drug treatment and recovery services as part of their public health responsibilities. As a condition of the Public Health Grant, local authorities are responsible for improving the uptake of, and outcomes from, their drug and alcohol treatment services, based on an assessment of local need and a plan which has been developed with local health and criminal justice partners. Over the next three years, through the Public Health Grant, we are providing local authorities with £3.4 billion of ringfenced funding for drug and alcohol treatment and recovery.

The Department delivers a robust monitoring and assurance programme, and quality improvement interventions, for local authorities commissioning drug and alcohol treatment services. The number of adults in treatment is now the highest since reporting began, with the latest annual statistics showing that between April 2024 and March 2025 there were 329,646 adults aged 18 years old and over in contact with community drug and alcohol treatment services. Of this total, in London there were 45,873 adults in treatment, 9% higher than the previous year, and in Lewisham there were 1,910, 28% higher than the previous year.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will conduct a longitudinal study of people treated with puberty blocking medication prior to its ban in 2024 to identify any issues before beginning another trial.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed

The Government is committed to supporting research that delivers a more robust, evidence-based understanding of gender incongruence support and treatment, especially for children and young people. The Cass Review received cross-party support and highlighted remaining significant gaps in clinical evidence. The PATHWAYS study positively responds to the Cass Review’s recommendation that a trial of puberty suppressing hormones should be taken forward urgently as part of a wider programme of research.

We are supporting the National Health Service in delivering this programme of research, to ensure research is embedded at the heart of new children and young people’s gender services as they are shaped. One element of the programme of research is a data linkage study.

The data linkage study is observational in nature, linking and analysing existing, routinely collected healthcare data for adults who, as children, were referred into the former Gender Identity Development Service, previously operated by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

This study requires no active patient participation and may provide useful insights on the experience and outcomes of former child gender service patients.

It is important to highlight that as the study is not designed as a comparative clinical trial, it will not provide direct evidence on the cause or effect of any individual treatment approach, nor provide evidence relating to any treatment’s safety or efficacy.

The data linkage study and the PATHWAYS clinical trial are separate, with different designs and purposes within a wider research programme.

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Dame Caroline Dinenage (Chair); Mr Bayo Alaba; Vicky Foxcroft; Damian

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Dame Caroline Dinenage (Chair); Mr Bayo Alaba; Vicky Foxcroft; Damian