Alcoholic Drinks: Misuse
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of a cross-government alcohol strategy.
Answered by Mrs Sharon Hodgson
The Government recognises that alcohol-related harm has wide ranging impacts across health, crime, productivity, and communities.
Commitments to addressing harms from alcohol feature in several of the Government's current strategies and plans. The National Health Service 10-Year Health Plan outlines crucial steps to help people make healthier choices about alcohol, including making it a legal requirement for alcohol labels to display health warnings and consistent nutritional information. This was reemphasised in the National Cancer Plan. The Men’s Health Strategy outlines the impact alcohol can have on men’s health, and announced the pilot of a new brief intervention to target the rise in cardiovascular disease deaths from combined alcohol and cocaine use among older men. To support better outcomes for people experiencing harmful drinking, the first ever United Kingdom clinical guidelines on alcohol treatment were published in November 2025.
The Government keeps the evidence on alcohol-related harm and the effectiveness of different policy approaches under review, and continues to consider how cross-Government action can best support improvements in population health and reduce health inequalities.
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