Health Services: Statistics

Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at on 20 February 2026.

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Photo of Carla Lockhart Carla Lockhart DUP, Upper Bann

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will have discussions with the Office for National Statistics on revising its back baseline to reflect pre-2020 trends.

Photo of Karin Smyth Karin Smyth Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

Analysts from the Department of Health and Social Care are having regular discussions with colleagues at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) regarding planned improvements to the methodology used to estimate excess deaths, as outlined in an ONS blog post from April 2025, which is available at the following link:

https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2025/04/04/excess-deaths-our-continued-work-towards-a-better-understanding

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