Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what policies they plan to bring forward to tackle the shorter average life expectancy in the most deprived areas of the country.

The Department is taking a comprehensive and evidence-based approach to reducing the health inequalities that shorten life expectancy including promoting healthier lifestyles across the whole of society, working to address the wider, social causes of ill health and early death as well as tackling differences in access to, and outcomes from, health services.

The legal duties to have regard to the need to reduce health inequalities apply to the Secretary of State for Health, National Health Service Commissioning Board, known as NHS England, and clinical commissioning groups, embedding consideration of health inequalities across the public health and health care system. For example, the need to reduce health inequalities has been reflected in the NHS Constitution, NHS Mandate, Joint Strategic Needs Assessments and is a condition of the public health grant to local authorities. Health inequalities are measured through the Public Health Outcomes Framework and the NHS Outcomes Framework and life expectancy is an overarching indicator in both.

In 2014, Living Well for Longer: National support for local action, which is attached, set out the national actions taken by the Department, wider Government, NHS England and Public Health England (PHE) in the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of the five big killer diseases and to reduce health inequalities. NHS England (in the Five Year Forward View) and PHE (in From evidence into action) have published long term plans which echo the need to prioritise and mainstream prevention as fundamental in improving outcomes and reducing health inequalities as well as maintaining sustainability of the health and care system. Copies of both documents have also been attached.