Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of changes in the level of public expenditure on health and social care on rates of mortality.

The Department continues to increase investment in health and social care and has committed to backing the National Health Service with an additional £10 billion, in real terms, by 2020/21. At the spring Budget we announced an additional £2 billion will be given to councils over the next three years for social care. In total, we have given councils access to £9.25 billion more dedicated funding for social care between 2017/18 and 2019/20.

The Department also monitors and publishes wider quarterly wider health outcome measures including mortality statistics in the NHS Outcomes Frameworks. The NHS Outcomes Framework is a set of indicators developed by the Department to monitor the health outcomes of adults and children in England.

The Framework sets out health outcome measures including mortality statistics in the NHS. The latest statistics among those aged under 75 show that the mortality rates from the two largest causes of death (cancer and cardiovascular disease) have reduced between 2010 and 2016 (by 12.2 and 16.8 deaths per 100,000 population, respectively).

The rates for the next two (respiratory disease and liver disease) have increased over the same period. However, the increases for respiratory and liver disease are smaller than the falls for cancer and cardiovascular disease (by 1.6 and 0.5 deaths per 100,000 population, respectively).