Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the reasons for the 32 per cent rise in the number of deaths from heroin or morphine abuse between 2012 and 2013; and how many of the 765 people who died as a result of heroin or morphine abuse in 2013 had left drug treatment in the month that preceded their death.

At this stage it is not possible to draw any definitive conclusions about a longer-term trend in deaths from one year’s data. Public Health England is currently analysing the data to better understand the reasons for the increase.