Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what work is being undertaken with the devolved administrations to maintain a central risk management process for antimicrobial resistance.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The 2024 to 2029 antimicrobial resistance (AMR) national action plan (NAP) is a United Kingdom-wide plan, setting out the challenging commitments and targets for the next five years to confront AMR.

The NAP programme is made up of eight implementation programmes that are responsible for delivering their implementation plans, which collectively contribute to meeting the commitments within the NAP. Each implementation programme records and manages risks within their own governance structures. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each have their own implementation programmes that they manage.

Risks that are deemed cross-cutting to the NAP are recorded within the programme’s UK-wide risk register, owned by the Department. These cross-cutting risks are monitored and discussed at the two programmes delivery boards, which are responsible for monitoring implementation of the NAP, to determine mitigating actions.

High-level, challenging programme risks can be escalated up to the UK AMR Strategy Board, members of which include senior officials from across the One Health sector and all four nations of the UK, who are responsible for providing strategic direction for mitigating large scale risks that jeopardise overall programme delivery.