Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to reduce addiction to prescribed benzodiazepines and z drugs.

Public Health England (PHE), NHS England and others are working together to deliver a wide-ranging programme of work to reduce addiction to medicines. This includes completed work such as publishing a guide to commissioning services to respond to addiction to medicines, factsheets for general practitioners (GPs) (Royal College of General Practitioners) and delivering face-to-face training for GPs and other healthcare workers. Looking ahead, PHE is supporting a number of pilots of improved local commissioning.

There is now better awareness of these issues among GPs and clearer prescribing guidelines.