Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the adequacy of the availability of continuous glucose monitoring for people with type-1 diabetes; and if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of taking steps to increase access to that monitoring.

The NHS Long Term Plan made a commitment that 20% of people with type 1 diabetes would benefit from life changing flash glucose monitors. Data up to the third quarter of 2022/23 shows that 73% of people with type 1 diabetes were prescribed flash glucose monitoring, against the 20% target. As a result of the recent National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance that also recommended that insulin dependent patients with type 2 diabetes should benefit from flash or continuous glucose monitoring devices, we are now starting to see a growth in prescription within the type 2 diabetes patient group.

Variation ratio in prescribing between the most and least affluent Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) quintiles has been monitored on a quarterly basis. Variation between these IMD quintiles has reduced in every English region. When the programme started, Flash was twice as likely to be prescribed to patients living in the most affluent areas. The current ratio between most and least affluent geographies is now at a ratio of 1 to 1.02, meaning there is virtually parity between the most and least deprived patient groups across England.