Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his Department is doing to narrow the 12 year difference in life expectancy between council wards in Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport constituency.

Addressing health inequalities is a Government priority. This was clearly set out in the Prime Minister’s inaugural speech in July. Key to this message was the importance of addressing the gap in life expectancy.

Achieving measurable and sustained reductions in health inequalities by 2020 and reducing the gaps in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are priority objectives in the Department’s Shared Delivery Plan: 2015 – 2020. Action is largely led locally to ensure that the solutions put in place reflect the needs of individual communities.

To address the differences in life expectancy across Plymouth, Plymouth Clinical Commissioning Group and health services have introduced the ‘Thrive’ initiative. This aims to tackle the four lifestyle choices (inactivity, diet, alcohol consumption and smoking) that lead to respiratory diseases, cancer, stroke and heart disease. The work, currently in its second year, is the start of the long term drive to improve health and reduce inequalities in Plymouth. Health organisations such as Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, Livewell Southwest and general practitioner Practices have signed up in support of the Thrive initiative.

In order to ensure that health services are supporting those communities with the highest need, the ‘Success Regime’ has been introduced across Devon, which aims to protect and promote services for patients in local health and care systems that are struggling with financial or quality problems. Additionally, the Sustainability and Transformation Plan for Wider Devon includes a requirement to ensure that sustainable general practice is in place for all populations with equitable access times for routine and urgent treatment.