Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the future trends in life expectancy.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has responsibility for estimating life expectany – both historical trends and future estimates. The Department uses the data that is produced by this source.

The ONS produces an `Expectation of Life, Principal Projection, England’ data-set. This provides past and projected expectations of life from the most recent (2014 based) life table. Life tables describe the course of mortality throughout the life cycle. Period and cohort life tables are produced biennially based on assumptions for future mortality from the national population projections and are available at the following link:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/bulletins/pastandprojecteddatafromtheperiodandcohortlifetables/2014baseduk1981to2064

Life expectancy is higher now than it has ever been for both men and women, and is generally increasing in most areas – including deprived ones.