Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking with international regulatory bodies to harmonise the regulation of weight loss drugs.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care and regulates medicine, medical devices and blood components for transfusion in the UK. The MHRA is responsible for ensuring medicines meet appropriate standards of safety, quality, and efficacy.

Weight loss medicines, like all medicines, are regulated nationally, but global harmonisation happens through bodies like the International Committee for Harmonisation (ICH), which the MHRA is a full member of.

The ICH guidelines include common standards for safety, efficacy, and quality. In addition, the World Health Organisation provides international norms.

Differences remain in how countries balance risks and benefits, meaning access and approval of weight loss medications can still vary worldwide. This is so that each approval matches the pathway of care in their country.

To support our post-marketing signal monitoring processes, the MHRA contributes to the International Post-Market Surveillance (IPMS) teleconference between the regulatory authorities in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Singapore. Each authority provides topics to discuss, and share information, which has on occasion included safety topics relating to weight loss medications.