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 geographic variations in the level of access to prevention education on diabetes potentially becoming a disease of deprivation.

The NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme was developed to prevent or delay onset of type 2 diabetes in adults in England already identified to be at high risk of type 2 diabetes and was launched in April 2016. Analysis of the first year of the programme showed significantly higher attendance rates in the most deprived quintile compared to the least deprived quintile, 72 per 100,000 population versus 60 per 100,000 population. This suggests that the programme is reaching those who are most at risk of developing type 2 diabetes.