Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help reduce the number of avoidable severe allergic reactions in (a) Yeovil constituency, (b) Somerset and (c) England.

Last year, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved two sublingual immunotherapy treatments for moderate to severe allergic rhinitis.

National Health Service partners in Somerset encourage all patients with a diagnosis of severe allergy to have prescribed and to carry with them an adrenaline injection device which when used early enough in a severe allergy response can prevent patient harm and admission.

Over the past five years, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has delivered a substantial programme of work to improve allergy safety in restaurants and food businesses, including in Yeovil. The FSA published new best practice guidance in March 2025 to improve allergen information when eating out. The FSA has also expanded its free online allergen training, which has now been taken by over one million people since 2020. Through this work, the FSA is aiming to enable people with food allergies to make informed and safe choices and trust the food that they receive.

The Department for Education is developing new statutory guidance which will significantly strengthen how schools support pupils with allergy. The Government has also amended the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to place a new statutory duty on schools to develop and publish an allergy safety policy, and to give powers to my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, to make regulations relating to allergy safety, including requiring schools to stock adrenaline devices, to secure allergy awareness training, and to record and report incidents of near misses. These measures should help to prevent instances of children experiencing severe allergic reactions while at school.