Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will publish his Department's estimate of the average length of time a person waits between referral for and commencement of alcohol treatment services.

Data is not collected in the format requested, however data from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System shows that of the 83,771 people receiving a first alcohol treatment intervention in 2013-14, 77,629 (93%) started within three weeks of referral. It should be noted that some people will receive more than one intervention at the same appointment, so the number of first interventions is somewhat higher than the number of referrals for the same year.