Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has considered the potential merits of taking steps to help prevent the withdrawal of medical (a) products and (b) treatments for rare conditions from the UK market where that withdrawal would leave patients without access to such a product or treatment.

Companies may decide to stop manufacturing a medicine for several reasons including commercial decisions, manufacturing capacity restraint and production problems. Companies are free to review their portfolios as they think necessary, and the Department has no powers to insist that a company continues to keep a product on the market.

There is a team within the Department that deals specifically with medicine supply problems. It has well-established procedures to deal with medicine shortages and discontinuations, whatever the cause, and works closely with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the pharmaceutical industry, NHS England, and others operating in the supply chain to help prevent shortages and to ensure that the risks to patients are minimised when shortages do arise. The team will also communicate management advice to the National Health Service advising clinicians on how to manage medicine supply issues.