Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his oral contribution, of 28 January 2020, Official Report, column 668, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of the classification of 15 HRT products within Category C of the NHS Drugs Tariff, published in June 2018 on the relative availability of HRT products in the UK compared with EU27 nations.

We are aware of ongoing supply issues with some hormone replacement therapy (HRT) preparations. The addition of HRT to the Drug Tariff is completely unrelated to the shortage.

We have been working closely with all suppliers of HRT preparations to maintain overall supply to patients. We have shared relevant information about the supply situation and availability of HRT products with the National Health Service and are having discussions with organisations such as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare and the British Menopausal Society. In October 2019 we took unprecedented action to ban the parallel export of all HRT products to keep these medicines in the United Kingdom.

We continue to work with all stakeholders to ensure relevant information about the HRT products affected by supply issues and the products that remain available is shared with the NHS on a regular basis.

We anticipate the supply situation will improve later this month (February 2020).