Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to meet the aims of the WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge to halve severe avoidable medication-related harms by 2022 compared to 2017 levels.

The World Health Organization (WHO) launched its third Global Patient Safety Challenge ‘Medication Without Harm’, in 2017, with the aim of reducing the global burden of severe and avoidable medication-related harm by 50% over five years.

In response to this challenge, the Department established a Short Life Working Group (SLWG) to advise on a programme to improve safety in the use of medication, including the best way to measure progress. Their report, published in February 2018, made recommendations for a programme of work to tackle medication error and improve medicine safety.