Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the findings of the report Coronavirus and the social impacts on disabled people in Great Britain: February 2021 published 09 April 2021 by the Office of National Statistics that after allowing for factors such as underlying health conditions, socio-economic and geographic factors, disabled people were significantly more likely to have died from coronavirus between 24 January 2020 and the end of February 2021, what steps his Department is taking to investigate fully the causes of that increased risk of death.

New research from the Office for National Statistics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published on 16 June 2021, which also considers deaths from COVID-19 by disability status, concludes that a combination of circumstances explain the increased risk to disabled people but more information is needed to ascertain whether the findings are robust as well as which protective and policy measures should be put in place. We will continue to monitor the latest research and draw on the latest available evidence to inform policy-making.