Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to take steps to reduce alcohol harm among deprived groups.
We have invested £27 million to establish specialist Alcohol Care Teams in the 25% hospitals with the highest rates of alcohol dependence-related admissions, alcohol-mortality, and deprivation. This is estimated to prevent 50,000 admissions over five years.
Local authorities are responsible for commissioning services to prevent, mitigate and treat alcohol-related health harm, based upon on local need. We are investing £533 million over three years to support local authority commissioned substance misuse treatment services in England. This funding will be targeted to areas of highest need first. This is in addition to local authorities’ expenditure annually on substance misuse services from the Public Health Grant.