Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to improve the UK's relative international status for healthier living.

The Department has taken a number of steps to improve the health of the population. This includes action at the national level, such as our world-leading programme to combat childhood obesity, implementation of one of the most comprehensive vaccination programmes in the world and the publication of the new Tobacco Control Plan for England in July 2017. The latter sets out a range of commitments which aim to deliver significant further reductions in smoking prevalence by 2022, as part of a long-term goal to create a smokefree generation.

The Government also charges Public Health England through its annual remit letter to take steps to tackle major public health issues and thereby promote healthier living. At the local level local authorities have the role of improving the health of their populations, backed by £16 billion funding over the Spending Review period. The United Kingdom performs well on a number of public health indicators; for example, adult smoking rates in the UK are down to their lowest levels at just below 16% in 2016 and are one of the lowest in Europe, whilst by 2014 late diagnosis among newly diagnosed HIV cases in the UK had fallen to 22%, significantly better than the EU21 average of 27%.