Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to implement an adult hearing screening programme; and if he will recommend to the National Screening Committee that it undertakes a public health campaign on deafness and hearing loss.

The UK National Screening Committee recommended in 2015 that screening for hearing loss in adults should not be offered because:

- although hearing loss in older adults is a serious public health problem the evidence is too limited to establish the type of screening test to be used, the severity of hearing loss to target, the age of the population to be screened and the frequency of screening;

- uncertainty on the effectiveness of the long term use of hearing aids and on the effectiveness of additional interventions aimed at improving the duration of hearing aid use; and

- the absence of randomised controlled trials of screening in the general population. Screening has not been shown to provide any hearing related improvement in quality of life in comparison to hearing loss identified in other ways.

There are currently no plans by Public Health England to run an awareness campaign on adult hearing loss.