Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many people died of mesothelioma in each of the five years up to December 2022.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

The Baroness Hodgson of Abinger CBE

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

08 September 2023

Dear Lady Hodgson,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking how many people died of mesothelioma in each of the five years up to December 2022 (HL9787).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is responsible for publishing statistics on deaths registered in England and Wales [1]. Information for Scotland [2] and Northern Ireland [3] is available from National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency respectively.

Causes mentioned on the death certificate are converted to International Classification of Diseases 10th edition (ICD-10) codes, with the underlying cause of death defined as the disease or injury that initiated the events that directly lead to the death. The ICD-10 code for mesothelioma is C45, which comes under Chapter 2: Neoplasms [4].

Table 1 provides a breakdown of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales in each year between 2017 and 2022 where the underlying cause of death was mesothelioma. Age-standardised mortality rates have been provided to allow comparisons between populations which may contain different proportions of people of different ages.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

Table 1: Number of deaths and age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) due to mesothelioma in England and Wales, registered 2017 to 2022 [5][6][7][8][9]

Source: Office for National Statistics

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/

[2] https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/deaths

[3] https://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/births-deaths-and-marriages/deaths

[4] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/methodologies/userguidetomortalitystatisticsjuly2017

[5] Figures are for deaths registered, rather than deaths occurring in each period.

[6] Figures include the deaths of usual residents of England and Wales as well as those of nonresidents.

[7] Based on deaths where mesothelioma (ICD-10 code C45) was the underlying cause of death.

[8] Age-standardised mortality rates per 100,000 people, standardised to the 2013 European Standard Population.

[9] Number of deaths and age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) due to mesothelioma can be provided at a lower geographic area such as region upon request.