Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the effect on public health of alcohol consumption in England.

In 2016, Public Health England published its alcohol evidence review which found that since 1980, sales of alcohol in England and Wales increased by 42%, from roughly 400 million litres in the early 1980s, peaked at 567 million litres in 2008 and then declined.

The review found that alcohol-related harms have increased in recent years, and that there are now over one million alcohol-related hospital admissions each year, half of which are people from the lowest socio-economic groups. Alcohol-related deaths have also increased, particularly for liver disease which has increased by 400%, since 1970.

The alcohol evidence review can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-public-health-burden-of-alcohol-evidence-review

Actions to help reduce alcohol harm include supporting:

- healthcare professionals to give brief alcohol advice to hospital inpatients and in primary care;

- hospitals with the highest rate of alcohol dependence-related admissions to establish alcohol care teams as recommended in the National Health Service Long Term Plan; and

- local authorities to commission effective alcohol treatment to help people recover from dependence.