Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people have been diagnosed with problems relating to alcohol consumption in each of the last three years.

In 2015-16, there were 144,908 adults receiving specialist treatment for alcohol problems. Further data about the numbers of people in treatment for alcohol problems is contained in a series of annual reports from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System, which is available online:

http://www.nta.nhs.uk/statistics.aspx

Data is not available on the number of new diagnoses of alcohol-related disease each year. The estimated number of hospital admissions where the main reason for admission was alcohol-related was 339,000 in 2015-16 and 330,000 in the previous two years.

Further data on alcohol-related hospital admissions and incidence of alcohol-related cancer is available from:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-alcohol-profiles-for-england-lape

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/local-alcohol-profiles

There are a number of actions underway to tackle the harm caused by alcohol, including alcohol-related cancers. These actions include NHS England’s national Commissioning for Quality and Innovation programme to incentivise the delivery of alcohol identification and brief advice; Public Health England’s One You campaign to motivate people to take steps to improve their health, with a focus on alcohol use; and the NHS Health Check provides an opportunity for general practitioners to offer advice to reduce alcohol use if appropriate.

The Government believes in informing and empowering citizens, and has a responsibility to provide the most up to date, clear information to enable people to make informed choices about their drinking. The 2016 United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ low risk drinking guidelines provide the public with the most up to date scientific information.