Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent manufacturing issues causing medicines shortages and to mitigate their impact.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are over 14,000 medicines and the majority are in good supply. While we can’t always prevent supply issues from occurring, we have a range of well-established processes and tools to manage them when they arise, to mitigate risks to patients. These include close and regular engagement with suppliers, use of alternative strengths or forms of a medicine to allow patients to remain on the same product, expediting regulatory procedures, sourcing unlicensed imports from abroad, adding products to the restricted exports and hoarding list, use of Serious Shortage Protocols, and issuing National Health Service communications to provide management advice and information on the issue to healthcare professionals including pharmacists, so they can advise and support their patients. Further information can be found in A guide to the systems and processes for managing medicines supply issues in England’.
The resilience of United Kingdom supply chains is a key priority, and we are continually learning and seeking to improve the way we work to both manage and help prevent supply issues and avoid shortages. The Department, working closely with NHS England, is taking forward a range of actions to improve our ability to mitigate and manage shortages and strengthen our resilience. These actions were set out in a policy paper published in August 2025, Managing a robust and resilient supply of medicines.
As part of that work, we continue to engage with industry, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and other colleagues across the supply chain as we progress work to co-design and deliver solutions. However, medicine shortages are a complex and global issue and everyone in the supply chain has a role to play in addressing them, and therefore continued action requires a collaborative approach.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many fines they have issued in the past year for failure to report medicines shortages.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Suppliers are legally responsible for reporting disruptions and discontinuations through the Health Service Products (Provision and Disclosure of Information) Regulations 2018 (the ‘Information Regulations’), this includes a provision that allows the Department to fine a company if they fail to report. To date the Department has not issued any fines.
Reporting of potential supply issues is critical, enabling the Department to complete a thorough risk assessment of the severity of the issue. Alongside legal requirements, the Department also has an online reporting tool, known as the Discontinuations and Shortages portal, launched in October 2020, which suppliers can use to notify the Department. When reporting issues are identified we work with companies to understand how we can help enable them to inform the Department of any future supply issues. While the majority of suppliers report disruption in a timely manner, not all do so, and this can impede our ability to mitigate patient risk. As part of our obligations under the ‘Information Regulations’, we regularly review and consider the need to amend provisions. We plan to consult on how to ensure we receive sufficient information to put in place effective mitigations for supply issues, and we will also be reviewing the penalties for not complying with legal reporting requirements to ensure that these support the timely reporting of supply issues.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they expect the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to complete its assessment of DCVax-L.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is an executive agency of the Department and regulates medicine, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion in the United Kingdom, with responsibility for ensuring that medicines meet appropriate standards of safety, quality, and efficacy.
Northwest Biotherapeutics has submitted a Marketing Authorization Application to the MHRA for DCVax®-L, an immunotherapy for glioblastoma. The MHRA is unable to comment on applications during the process of review, but the MHRA can confirm that this application is not affected by any historical backlogs, and the agency is assessing all applications rapidly for safety, quality, and efficacy.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they are making in speeding up the approval and rollout of personalised cancer vaccines.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has completed a public consultation on its draft guideline on individualised mRNA cancer immunotherapies, a new type of personalised cancer treatment. These technologies use cutting-edge science such as artificial intelligence to design a medicine tailored to each patient’s unique tumour profile.
We received positive responses from across the life sciences community, the National Health Service, patient groups, academics, and international regulators. Feedback recognised the United Kingdom’s leadership in this area, while calling for greater clarity in some aspects of the guideline.
In response, we will refine the guideline to ensure regulatory expectations are clearly articulated, without hampering innovation. This will facilitate faster access to these promising new therapies, while upholding our standards of safety, quality, and efficacy. The final version of the guideline will be published in the coming months, with future updates anticipated as regulatory experience evolves in this rapidly developing field.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the cost to the NHS of the resident doctors' strike between 25–30 July, including cover for absent staff, disruption and catch-up work.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The five-day resident doctor strike in July 2025 had an estimated cost to the National Health Service of around £240 million and this is a starting estimate for the planned November strike. The costs were lower than in July 2024 as a result of lower turnout. We continue to update estimates as new data becomes available, in line with receiving business as usual financial data from NHS systems.
The NHS has tried and tested plans in place to minimise disruption and will work with partners to ensure safe care for patients continues to be available and emergency services continue to operate.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government by what date they expect the abolition of NHS England to be completed.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We will deliver on the planned timetable of bringing NHS England back into the Department within two years, a move that will put an end to the duplication of two organisations doing the same job.
The abolition of NHS England requires primary legislation, and as such is subject to the will of Parliament. We are working with the Leader of the House and business managers to ensure an appropriate timetable that enables us to work towards the two-year delivery timetable already announced.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of regional variations in the uptake of prostate specific antigen testing in men.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Routine prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing is not offered on the National Health Service, and therefore the Department has not taken a formal assessment of uptake. However, men aged 50 years old or over can ask their general practitioner for a PSA test, even if they do not have symptoms. This applies to anyone aged 50 years old or over in any part of England.
Whilst it is recognised that the PSA test can be a valuable diagnostic tool in certain contexts, its limitations mean it is not currently recommended for population-level screening. To find better ways of testing for prostate cancer, the Government is investing £16 million into the Prostate Cancer UK-led TRANSFORM screening trial, which aims to identify more effective approaches for detecting prostate cancer earlier.
The UK National Screening Committee, which independently advises ministers, is also reviewing the evidence for both population-wide and targeted prostate cancer screening. Depending on the UK National Screening Committee’s recommendation regarding screening for prostate cancer, an impact assessment may also be produced using the HM Treasury Green Book methodology, which considers wider social and economic impacts.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the current overspends in systems in the NHS, and the impact of those overspends on winter resilience.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As of July 2025, there is a total system overspend of £172 million, which includes some of the impact of industrial action and reflects held back deficit support funding. The issues are very concentrated, with six systems accounting for more than half of the total overspend. At the same point last year, systems had overspent by £487 million, so we are seeing strong signs of improvement following the changes made as part of the NHS Financial Reset.
Overspends must be addressed through improved financial management and they should not undermine the National Health Service’s ability to respond to winter pressures. As set out in the 2025/26 Urgent and Emergency Care Plan, the NHS is focused on improvements that will see the biggest impact on urgent and emergency care performance this winter, including improved hospital flow, reduced ambulance handover times, and improved vaccination uptake among frontline staff.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many times the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has met the NHS Staff Council since 1 January.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Minister of State for Health meet regularly with individual Agenda for Change (AfC) trade union leaders and with representatives of NHS organisations to discuss matters affecting the NHS workforce.
It is not usual practice for Ministers to attend NHS Staff Council meetings, which are used to discuss policy issues affecting the AfC workforce and to maintain the NHS terms and conditions of service. Accordingly, there have been no meetings between the Secretary of State and the NHS Staff Council as a whole since 1 January.
Both ministers have written to the NHS Staff Council on issues relating to AfC pay, terms, and conditions since 1 January, and Department officials continue to attend meetings of the NHS Staff Council.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will publish the results of the "war game" exercise carried out as part of the NHS's winter preparations.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are no plans to publish individual National Health Service system's plans or the outcomes of stress-testing centrally. System winter plans are locally owned and created in order to meet specific local needs and circumstances and are best communicated by NHS organisations locally. Nationally, the actions being taken to prepare for this coming winter are set out in the Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26. A copy of this plan is attached.