Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment the Government has made of the effect of fuel poverty on trends in the level of respiratory problems.

Respiratory problems are usually caused by a number of different factors, making it difficult to quantify the contribution of an individual risk such as fuel poverty.

Public Health England published the 2^nd Atlas of variation in risk factors and healthcare for respiratory disease in England in 2019. This is available to view at the following link:

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/atlas-of-variation

The atlas looks at variation in the percentage of houses that experience fuel poverty and the Excess Winter Deaths Index at lower-tier local authority level.