Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will request that the Care Quality Commission publishes data on trends of GP practices prescribing benzodiazepine.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

The CQC has provided the following information:

CQC are not currently conducting a review of the prescribing of benzodiazepine.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) collect data on the prescribing of benzodiazepine but this is not collated nationally. The CQC would be alerted to any prescribing trends and outliers during discussions with the CCGs when a GP practice is inspected.