Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking (1) to identify unpaid carers, and (2) to share these data across (a) different Government departments, (b) the NHS, and (c) local government.

The People at the Heart of Care: Adult Social Care Reform White Paper addressed identifying unpaid carers through increasing the use of markers in National Health Service electronic health records by simplifying current approaches to data collection and registration.

On 17 October 2022, NHS England wrote to all general practitioner (GP) practices about the importance of identifying carers and advising how caring status should be recorded on patient records. Extraction of this data from GP systems will commence shortly. There are no current plans to share this data with other Government Departments and local government.