Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what meetings her department has had since July 2024 with the British Liver Trust, and what the dates of those meetings were.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
External meetings held by ministers and senior civil servants are reported on a quarterly basis in the Department’s transparency publications. Other officials hold regular meetings with a range of external stakeholders, but under successive administrations, it has never been the practice for details of those meetings to be routinely published.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make date of birth a mandatory field when reporting a suspected adverse reaction to the Yellow Card scheme run by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
For medicines and vaccines, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) aligns with internationally recognised pharmacovigilance standards including the International Council for Harmonisation E2B (R3) standard for the collection and transmission of adverse reaction data. While reporters are encouraged to provide as much relevant information as possible, including date of birth where known, a valid individual case safety report is only required to contain sufficient information to identify a patient, such as age group, sex, initials, or a patient medical record number. In general, the MHRA seeks to collect sufficient information to support effective safety monitoring, whilst maintaining a proportionate and accessible system to encourage reporting from healthcare professionals, patients and carers. Requiring information that may not always be immediately available could create an unnecessary barrier to potential reporting rates.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many of the suspected adverse reaction reports of unknown age for the COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna monovalent were followed up by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to try and recover the missing information.
Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The requested information is not held centrally by the Department and could only be collated and verified at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the implications for her Department's policies of the report from the Anti-Slavery Commissioner entitled Anticipating Exploitation: Forced Surrogacy; and what assessment she has made of the potential risk of reproductive exploitation.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No such assessment has been made.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Food Safety Act 1990, what is the legal basis for the adding of folic acid to non-wholewheat flour as a public health measure.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Bread and Flour (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2024 made provisions for the mandatory fortification of non-wholemeal wheat flour with folic acid, following a final decision to proceed with this long-standing proposal taken by the previous government in January 2024, when the Rt Hon Member was the Minister for Common Sense.
These provisions were made using powers in sections 6(4), 16(1)(a) and (e), 18(1)(c), 26(1)(a) and (3) and 48(1) of the Food Safety Act 1990. In particular, section 16(1)(a) includes provisions for “requiring, prohibiting or regulating the presence in food or food sources of any specified substance, or any substance of any specified class, and generally for regulating the composition of food.”
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of the reduction in the Referral to Treatment waiting list between August 2024 and March 2026 was attributable to (a) increased completed treatments and (b) non-treatment removals, including validation exercises.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Rt Hon Member to the answer provided in the House of Lords on 30 June in response to Question HL381.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether NHS England plans to publish monthly data showing the number of Referral to Treatment pathways removed from waiting lists by reason for removal.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Rt Hon Member to the answer provided in the House of Lords on 30 June in response to Question HL381.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 10 July 2026 to Question 15320 on Folic Acid, with reference to the Food Standard Agency's information page entitled Guidance: Folic Acid, updated on 10 July 2026, where the nine pieces of evidence can be found as the links are not working.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) website moved over to the GOV.UK platform on 25 June 2026. The FSA’s information page on the fortification of flour with folic acid is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/folic-acid/folic-acid
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the article in The Lancet by Dr Czeizel entitled Can terathanasia explain the protective effect of folic-acid supplementation on birth defects, published on 16 August 1997, particularly the comment that fetal deaths could readily account for not just part of the effect of folic acid on prevention of defect in births, but for the entire effect.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
In the United Kingdom, folic acid fortification was first considered by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy (COMA) in 2000.
In its report on Folic Acid and the Prevention of Disease, COMA considered the 1997 paper by Hook and Czeizelb, Can terathanasia explain the protective effect of folic-acid supplementation on birth defects?.
COMA noted that “It has been suggested that some agents that reduce the incidence of birth defects might do so by increasing the rate of death or abortion of affected fetuses ("terathanasia") and that the effect of folic acid on [neural tube defects] NTDs could be mediated by this means. For this reason, there has been some concern over an increased rate of spontaneous abortions among women taking folic acid supplements.”
COMA further noted that it “is most likely due, however, to an increase in fertility and multiple pregnancies among women taking supplements and to an effect of folate in allowing the survival of non-viable conceptuses to a stage where their loss is recognised as abortions. The generally accepted view is that folic acid supplements prevent NTDs simply by allowing the normal development of the fetal neural tube.”
Folic acid fortification was recommended by COMA in 2000 and by its successor the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) in 2006, after an extensive review of the evidence on folate and health. The SACN has further considered the evidence in its 2009 report to the Chief Medical Officer on folic acid and colorectal cancer risk and its 2017 update on folic acid and did not identify any further concerns on the issue.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the government announcement of 27 June 2026 on Pioneering projects to transform obesity care, for what reason the relevant competing interests of the quoted experts were not disclosed.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill
The Government announcement on 27 June 2026, titled Pioneering projects to transform obesity care, backed by £85 million from government and industry, was a press notice announcing the 12 successful projects funded through the Obesity Pathway Innovation Programme. The quoted individuals were identified by their names, organisation, and roles.
Press notices are intended to communicate Government announcements and are not scientific or academic publications. The affiliations of those quoted were set out in the announcement, enabling readers to understand the capacity in which comments were provided.