Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Department's issuing of a supply disruption alert for Lithium carbonate, what steps he has taken to (a) help prevent an increase in price of Priadel and (b) adjust the price of Camcolit as a result of that supply disruption.

Supplies of Priadel (lithium carbonate) are currently available.

Ensuring patients have access to the medicines they need is vital. The Department brought the supply of Priadel to the attention of the Competition and Markets Authority which has now opened an investigation.

Essential Pharma has now agreed to continue supplying Priadel to the National Health Service whilst we work to agree a fair and appropriate price for this medicine.

Prices of branded medicines are controlled through the 2019 Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access and equivalent statutory scheme. There are no controls on prices of generic medicines. Instead, we rely on competition to drive prices down which has led to some of the lowest prices in Europe. In some instances, where there is no competition, some very large price increases have been observed. The Competition and Markets Authority has a number of live investigations into excessive prices of generic medicines.