Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had with representatives of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on the Guideline Development Group working on the draft partial update to Clinical Guidance 43 on the prevention, identification, assessment and management of overweight and obesity.

Ministers have had no such discussions.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an independent body and as such it would be inappropriate for Ministers to intervene. NICE is responsible for the methods used to develop and update its guidance and reviews its published clinical guidelines in order to take account of the latest available evidence.

NICE consulted on its draft updated clinical guideline on the prevention, identification, assessment and management of overweight and obese adults and children in July and August. NICE will take the stakeholder comments from the consultation into account in developing the final guideline, which is currently planned for publication in November.