Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to ensure that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Guideline Development Group working on the draft partial update to Clinical Guidance 43 on the prevention, identification, assessment and management of overweight and obesity is taking fully into account all published studies in relation to the use of very low calorie diets for weight loss to ensure that in the interests of patient care and NHS expenditure all practical alternatives to bariatric surgery are considered prior to such surgery being offered.

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.