Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicola Blackwood]

The hon. Lady is right to identify the scale of the challenge, which is why we have put AMR on our national risk register, and she is also right to point out that no one country can tackle AMR alone. The United Kingdom has played a global leadership role. We co-sponsored the World Health Organisation’s 2015 global health plan and created the £265 million Fleming fund so that we could specifically help poor countries to tackle drug resistance, and we will continue to play that global leadership role.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The O’Neill report was published some six months ago and included recommendations for national Governments. What practical progress have the Government made so far?

[Nicola Blackwood]

On 19 September we published our comprehensive response to the report, which describes a range of actions that we will take on each of Lord O’Neill’s recommendations. The most practical progress that I can report is the fact that the prescribing of antibiotics has fallen for the first time since records began. I think that we can all be proud of that progress.