Rishi Sunak has announced a crackdown on smoking but how much does the habit cost the NHS?

The Prime Minister said that the legal age for buying tobacco should rise every year to stop youngsters from taking up smoking in a speech at the Conservative Paty conference on Wednesday.

The plans, which would introduce a new law banning tobacco sales to anybody born on or after January 1 2009, would mean up to 1.7 million fewer people smoking by 2075, according to Downing Street.

Approximately 6.4 million people still smoked in 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Lancashire Telegraph: It's one of the biggest causes of death and illness in the UK, according to the NHS. ( Getty Images)It's one of the biggest causes of death and illness in the UK, according to the NHS. ( Getty Images) (Image: Getty Images)

Currently, smoking causes around one in five cancer cases and more than one in four cancer deaths each year in the UK.

It's one of the biggest causes of death and illness in the UK, according to the NHS.

How many people die from smoking every year in the UK?

In fact, every year around 76,000 people in the UK die from smoking and many more continue to live with debilitating smoking-related illnesses.

The health service has also stressed that smoking increases your risk of developing more than 50 serious health conditions.

Following a Government commitment to make England smoke-free by 2030, a review was published in June 2022 which was led by Dr Javed Khan.

The review made a series of recommendations, including increasing the legal age for buying tobacco.

As part of the review, Dr Khan estimated the annual cost to society of smoking at around £17 billion.

He added that smoking costs £2.4 billion each year to the NHS alone.

How much have you cost the NHS?

Lancashire Telegraph: Approximate NHS bill Approximate NHS bill (Image: GoCompare Bill of Healtj)

Overall, the UK spent over £216.8 billion on health in 2021/22 ( Statista) - but what portion of that was for you?

Insurance company GoCompare has an interactive tool which can help you assess how much you have cost the NHS.

The ‘Bill of Health’ tool lets you enter your medical conditions, appointments, prescriptions and more to try and ascertain just how much your approximate bill is to date.

The tool asks you how many GP appointments you have attended as well as how many prescriptions, missed appointments and more.

You will also be asked about various health conditions such as diabetes, whether or not you have given birth to children and if you have broken any bones.

When you’ve entered all your details, the tool will provide you with an estimated bill for the NHS.

It then asks you to enter to salary and it will work out exactly what your yearly contribution to NHS services is.

The website does disclaim that these bills are an estimation: “All costs listed in this interactive are approximate and should not be relied upon as definitive.

"Average costs have been sourced from a variety of publications which can be found here.

"NHS tax contributions displayed are approximate calculations, and only standard rate has been used to provide general estimates.”