Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps is he taking to improve supply chains for the chemicals used to process blood tests.

The Department has well established procedures to deal with shortages of medical products if and when they arise and works closely with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, NHS England and industry to help prevent shortages and to ensure that the risks to patients are minimised when they do arise. These procedures operate at a national, regional and local level to address any supply-chain related issues that might arise.

NHS England and NHS Improvement are providing support to pathology networks and suppliers of chemicals and other diagnostics products to ensure continuity of supply and delivery of pathology services.