Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an estimate of the average administrative time spent by healthcare professionals on updating local formularies to include hormone replacement therapies in the last 12 months.

No estimate has been made as this information is not held centrally.

Local formularies guide prescribers to preferred products rather than mandating what they can and cannot prescribe. Prescribers are still able to prescribe medicines that are not listed on a formulary. Formularies do not always include medicines from all clinical areas, as they are tailored towards areas where support is felt to be helpful and or necessary for a local area.