Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the gap in healthy life expectancy between Bristol Central and the rest of the UK.

Healthy life expectancy at birth in the City of Bristol is currently 60.1 years for both males and females. This compares to the England average of 60.9 years for males and 61.3 years for females, and the United Kingdom average of 60.7 years for males and 60.9 years for females.

The Government has set out an ambitious commitment to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions. We know that reducing the gap will require action on challenges that are more prevalent in areas with lower healthy life expectancy, with a shift from treatment to prevention as set out in the 10-Year Health Plan.

Work is already underway to address this. We are taking action to tackle the obesity crisis and have delivered the Tobacco and Vapes Act which will create our first smoke-free generation.

The Government recognises that reducing the gap is not just a health challenge, which is why we are also taking a range of cross-Government action to tackle health inequalities. This includes the introduction of Awaab’s Law, ensuring landlords will have to fix significant damp and mould hazards; and the introduction of a new statutory health and health inequalities duty for Strategic Authorities.

The population health priorities in the South West focus on improving population health outcomes and reducing health inequalities and health disparities of inclusion health groups such as those who are socially excluded and typically experience multiple overlapping risk factors for poor health, including poverty, trauma, stigma and barriers to accessing services.

This includes increasing the detection and treatment of people with hypertension, improving the uptake of health checks, increasing the number of people supported to stop smoking and increasing the number of people affected by long term sickness who are supported back into employment.