Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 14 February 2019 to Question 219373 on UK Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostics Collaborative, what representations his Department has received from members of that Collaborative; if he will publish the names of its members; and whether a Chair of that Collaborative has been appointed.

NHS England established the United Kingdom Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Diagnostics Collaborative in 2018 to deliver the UK’s diagnostic ambitions for AMR. The Collaborative has played a valuable role in developing the diagnostic elements of the new five-year UK AMR national action plan, published in January this year.

The work of the Collaborative contributes directly to the Government’s commitments on AMR, and the Collaborative’s secretariat communicates with the Department on a regular basis and it has been represented by its secretariat and former chair in the UK AMR Programme’s governance groups.

The Collaborative’s chair remains vacant while NHS England develops detailed plans to support the implementation of the new national plan on AMR. As part of this work, the membership of the Collaborative is under review.

Current membership is drawn from a range of stakeholders across Government and its agencies, the devolved administrations, the health system, veterinary medicine, professional bodies, academia, the research community and industry. Members at or above ‘very senior manager’ (VSM) level and partner agencies involved in the Collaborative are listed in the following table.