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Alcoholic Drinks: Expenditure

Answer

The Department does not maintain an annual record of the cost to the national health service of treating people with such illnesses.Academic research has indicated that the direct cost to the NHS of treating people with tobacco related-illnesses in England is £2.7 billion per annum (Callum C.) (2008), The cost of smoking to the NHS in Health Economics, Policy and Law. This report is available at:"http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=l&pdftype=l&fid=7879505&jid=HEP&volume Id=-l&issueId=&aid=7879503"There has been no recent estimate of the annual cost to the NHS of treating alcohol-related illnesses; however, a review into the total cost of alcohol harms was carried out by the Department in 2008. The cost of alcohol harm to the NHS in England estimates that the total cost of alcohol harms to the NHS is around £2.7 billion a year. A copy of this review has already been placed in the Library.Earlier this year, Policy Exchange estimated that the wider cost to society of tobacco use is almost £14 billion per annum. In their report, 'Cough up', they looked at the cost of early death or retirement due to sickness, payment of benefits to support widows and families, the costs of sickness at work to employers, the human and financial costs of smoking-related fires, smoking breaks at work and cleaning up cigarette butts. A copy of this report has been placed in the Library.Department statistics show that, in England in 2007-08, there were estimated to be 945,000 alcohol-related hospital admissions, which is 7% of all hospital admissions.It is estimated that up to 35% of all Accident and Emergency attendance and ambulance costs may be alcohol-related.The National Audit Office has carried out an audit of NHS spend on alcohol treatment. Its report, Reducing Alcohol Harm: health services in England for alcohol misuse, was published in November 2008 and found, that where primary care trust expenditure on alcohol services was known, an average of £600,000 was spent on commissioning alcohol services in 2006-07.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

19679; 517 c294-5W

Session

2010-12

Related items

Deposited Paper DEP2010-1884
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Deposited papers
House of Commons

Subjects

Alcoholic drinks Misuse Smoking

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk