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 to ensure medicine shortages do not impact clinicians' ability to prescribe medicines that are best suited to the patient.

The resilience of UK supply chains is a key priority, and we are continually learning and seeking to improve the way we work to both manage and help prevent supply issues and avoid shortages. In August, the Government published a policy paper, ‘Managing a robust and resilient supply of medicines’, which outlines the steps the Department and NHS England are taking to enhance resilience in our supply chains. As part of that work, we continue to engage with industry, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and other colleagues across the supply chain as we progress work to co-design and deliver these actions.

While we cannot always prevent supply issues from occurring, we have a range of well-established processes and tools to manage them when they arise and mitigate risks to patients. These include close and regular engagement with suppliers, use of alternative strengths or forms of a medicine to allow patients to remain on the same product, expediting regulatory procedures, sourcing unlicensed imports from abroad, adding products to the restricted exports and hoarding list, use of Serious Shortage Protocols (SSPs), and issuing National Health Service communications to provide management advice and information on the issue to healthcare professionals including pharmacists, so they can advise and support their patients.