Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress he has made on the development of a population-based measure to help determine the numbers of older people who report feeling lonely; and how this measure will build on the measures already contained in the Public Health and Adult Social Care Outcomes Frameworks.

Public Health England has commissioned the Institute of Health Equity to undertake a rapid review of the evidence around social isolation across the lifecourse. A publication, aimed at NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups and local authorities, will describe who is at risk of social isolation, at what stage of life, what impact this has on health inequalities and what works to reduce social isolation in the groups identified.

The Department considered a number of data sources that could provide data for a population-based measure of loneliness. The Department has not found a measure that would provide local authorities with sufficient information for action. The Department remains interested in exploring how the issue can be measured in the general population in a way that will support local authorities, and will retain the existing measure of social isolation in both the Public Health Outcomes Framework and the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework.