Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will make an assessment of the primary outcome results of the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial.

NHS England is aware of the literature that has been published to date in relation to the DiRECT Trial, and are of the view that the results of the trial suggest that very low calorie diets could potentially be highly impactful if it should prove possible to deliver the intervention at scale.

At present, the duration of the effect of the intervention trialled (i.e. the duration of any period of remission) is unknown and NHS England has not yet seen a cost effectiveness analysis, or other economic data from the trial. It is therefore not yet possible to establish the overall effectiveness of the intervention at this time. Whilst waiting for the two year outcomes data to be published, NHS England is exploring opportunities to pilot these approaches at greater scale to further understand their potential.