Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report T3 Prescribing Survey Report, published on 7 February; and in particular the reported failure by Clinical Commissioning Groups to follow NHS England’s Regional Medicines Optimisation Committee’s revised Guidance–Prescribing of Liothyronine, published in July 2019.

We have made no such assessment.

NHS England and NHS Improvement along with NHS Clinical Commissioners’ latest guidance for clinical commissioning groups, taking into account comments from the British Thyroid Association, was published in June 2019. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence also published guidelines in November 2019 stating that liothyronine should not be offered routinely for primary hypothyroidism, either alone, or in combination with levothyroxine.

Representatives of NHS England and NHS Improvement and NHS Clinical Commissioners met with representatives from the Thyroid Trust, Healthwatch England, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Borwick of Hawkshead on 13 February 2020. NHS England and NHS Improvement will clarify guidance within the National Health Service system. This guidance will set out that the recommendation of the clinical working group was that liothyronine should not be routinely prescribed in primary care; but there may be circumstances where prescribing of the medication is clinically appropriate for individual patients as determined by endocrinologists providing NHS services, after a carefully audited trial of at least three months duration of the medicine.