Asked by: Ben Coleman (Labour - Chelsea and Fulham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to update the Government Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services to include a mandatory limit on the procurement of ultra-processed foods across the public estate, including prisons and government departments.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra continues to engage with actors across public sector supply chains and are carefully considering possible policy options, including the potential for updating the government buying standards for food and catering services (GBSF). We will continue to work closely with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), who own the nutritional elements of the GBSF, to ensure healthier options are widely accessible in all public sector settings including prisons and government departments.
Asked by: James Cleverly (Conservative - Braintree)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential health impacts for consumers since fruit and nut bars were included in the location restrictions for high fat, sugar and salt products from October 2022.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will take decisive action on the obesity crisis to ease the strain on our National Health Service and create the healthiest generation of children ever.
Restrictions on the promotion by location of ‘less healthy’ food and drink products in stores and their equivalent places online have been in place since 2022. These restrictions apply to categories of products that impact most on childhood obesity, which were chosen following public consultation. Only fruit and nut bars that are high in saturated fat, salt, or sugar are in scope of the restrictions. The products that are in and out of scope of the restrictions are set out in the Schedule to the Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021 and we have published guidance to support industry on complying with the restrictions.
We published a detailed impact assessment on the costs to industry and the benefits of this policy on the GOV.UK website. We will continue to monitor the effectiveness of the restrictions and will publish a Post Implementation Review within five years of the restrictions taking legal effect.
Asked by: James Cleverly (Conservative - Braintree)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of including fruit and nut bars under the restrictions for high fat, sugar and salt products on economic growth.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will take decisive action on the obesity crisis to ease the strain on our National Health Service and create the healthiest generation of children ever.
Restrictions on the promotion by location of ‘less healthy’ food and drink products in stores and their equivalent places online have been in place since 2022. These restrictions apply to categories of products that impact most on childhood obesity, which were chosen following public consultation. Only fruit and nut bars that are high in saturated fat, salt, or sugar are in scope of the restrictions. The products that are in and out of scope of the restrictions are set out in the Schedule to the Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021 and we have published guidance to support industry on complying with the restrictions.
We published a detailed impact assessment on the costs to industry and the benefits of this policy on the GOV.UK website. We will continue to monitor the effectiveness of the restrictions and will publish a Post Implementation Review within five years of the restrictions taking legal effect.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that infant feeding advice provided in healthcare settings is independent of commercial influence.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Infant feeding is critical to a baby’s healthy growth and development. The Government is committed to giving every child the best start in life and that includes helping families to access support to feed their baby.
The Department has policy responsibility for infant formula regulations in England. Legislation covers the composition, labelling, and standards, including marketing, to ensure infant formulas provide all the nutrients a healthy baby needs for development and growth and to ensure consumers are informed correctly about their contents so that families receive clear, accurate, and non-misleading information about their use. The legislation makes clear that any infant formula used in health care settings must be provided without any form of commercial promotion. Labels or information supplied to healthcare professionals must be strictly factual and scientific, with no marketing claims.
The majority of maternity services are either accredited under or are working towards the quality standards of UNICEF-UK’s Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI). The BFI sets out quality standards for complying with the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. This includes requiring maternity services to avoid commercial influence and prohibit promotion of substitutes to families.
The Department is also taking action to ensure parents and carers receive proactive information on the nutritional sufficiency of infant formula, regardless of its price. In response to the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations on the infant and follow-on formula market, the four governments of the United Kingdom will work with the National Health Service in England, Scotland, and Wales, the Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland, and other relevant bodies to develop and test clear, impartial messaging on the nutritional sufficiency of infant formula. This will include reviewing existing channels used in healthcare settings, such as online content and supporting materials provided to parents, to ensure messaging is delivered effectively and consistently.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether NHS England has engaged formally with the General Medical Council about the interaction between mandatory pre-referral Advice and Guidance requirements and the professional duty of GPs under General Medical Council guidance to refer patients to specialist care when it is in their best interests to do so; and whether a joint risk assessment or patient safety review has been carried out to ensure GPs are not placed in conflict between their contractual and professional obligations.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In early 2026, we concluded the consultation on the changes to the GP Contract for 2026/27. As part of this process, we expanded the consultation to engage with a wider set of primary care stakeholders, these were the British Medical Association’s General Practitioner’s Committee England, the Royal College of General Practitioners, National Voices, the Institute of General Practice Management, Healthwatch England, the NHS Confederation, and the National Association of Primary Care.
The Department has not engaged formally with the General Medical Council (GMC) regarding the interaction between the 2026/27 contractual changes and the professional duties set out in GMC guidance. No formal joint risk assessment or joint patient safety review has been undertaken. However, the Department and NHS England considered the potential risks, benefits, and wider impact of the policy changes as part of standard policy-development processes.
The 2026/27 GP Contract embeds the current Advice and Guidance (A&G) enhanced service funding into core practice funding. The contract does not mandate the use of A&G in all circumstances. Instead, practices are expected to use A&G prior to or in place of a planned care referral, where clinically appropriate, and to follow locally agreed referral pathways. This reflects longstanding planned‑care referral practice and does not alter existing legal or professional accountability frameworks for general practitioners (GPs).
GPs, and other primary care referrers, remain professionally accountable for making appropriate clinical decisions, including referring patients to specialist care when it is in the patient’s best interests. The use of A&G does not override those responsibilities or place GPs in conflict between contractual and professional obligations. NHS England continues to support clinicians through guidance, pathway design, and local governance arrangements to ensure A&G is used safely, proportionately, and in a way that preserves clear clinical accountability.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has undertaken a risk assessment for changes to the GP contract regarding Advice and Guidance due to be implemented from 1 April 2026.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has not undertaken a formal risk assessment for the changes made to the GP Contract regarding Advice and Guidance (A&G) due to be implemented from 1 April 2026. However, in developing this policy, the Department and NHS England have carefully considered the potential risks, benefits, and wider impact as part of the standard policy-development process.
As part of the 2026/27 GP Contract, we are embedding the current A&G enhanced service funding within core practice funding. Practices will be required to use A&G prior to or in place of a planned care referral where clinically appropriate and to follow locally agreed referral pathways.
Between April 2025 and December 2025, A&G has avoided 1.3 million patients being unnecessarily added to hospital waiting lists by providing them with expert advice in their community.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the tapered annual allowance for pensions on the level of retention of senior NHS clinicians; and whether her Department plans to consider the potential merits of changing the taper to increase NHS workforce capacity.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The annual allowance limits the amount that an individual can save in all their pension pots before they have to pay a tax charge. It aims to ensure that the incentives for pension saving, which are costly to the taxpayer, are appropriately targeted across society. Tax policy, including the level of the annual allowance, is a matter for my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Increases to the level of the standard annual allowance, the adjusted income threshold, and the minimum tapered allowance were made in 2023. These reforms aimed to encourage highly skilled National Health Service staff to remain in the workforce for longer by easing the tax burden on the highest earners, reducing incentives for early retirement and supporting consultants to take on additional work, helping to increase capacity and reduce waiting lists.
Decisions about undertaking extra work are influenced by a range of personal and professional factors, making it difficult to isolate the specific impact of pension tax policy. There is no clear evidence from national NHS payroll data that the annual allowance pension tax regime constrains consultant activity in aggregate.
Where NHS staff have pension savings that exceed their annual allowance, they can carry forward any unused annual allowance from the previous three tax years. This will increase their current year’s allowance, reducing or potentially avoiding any annual allowance tax charge that is due.
Additionally, the NHS Pension Scheme offers a Scheme Pays facility which allows impacted members to pay charges using the value of their pension. This spreads the cost of paying a tax charge over the lifetime of the pension rather than requiring an immediate outlay. For most members, the growth in their pension benefits at retirement, even net of a charge, would still represent an excellent return on their pension contributions.
Information for members is available on the NHS Pensions website, which is available at the following link:
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/member-hub/annual-allowance
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Caerphilly)
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 that (a) alcohol advertising and (b) websites selling alcoholic products provide reference to addiction support platforms.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the United Kingdom, the Advertising Standards Authority is responsible for regulating advertising through enforcing the codes set by the Committees of Advertising Practice and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice. There are rules about ensuring alcohol and drinking are portrayed in a responsible way, for instance adverts generally should not imply, condone, or encourage immoderate, irresponsible, or anti-social drinking. The codes do not currently require alcohol advertisements to signpost to addiction support services.
Online sales of alcohol are regulated under the Licensing Act 2003. There is currently no statutory requirement for online retailers to signpost to addiction support platforms.
The Department of Health and Social Care will continue to work with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, as the lead Government department responsible for advertising, and the Home Office, as the department responsible for licensing, to understand the evidence base and explore policy responses for addressing alcohol harms.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the UK’s preparedness for medicine shortages caused by future pandemics or international disruptions.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The resilience of United Kingdom supply chains is a key priority, and the Department and NHS England are committed to helping to build long term supply chain resilience for medicines. We are continually learning and seeking to improve the way we work to both manage and help prevent supply issues and avoid shortages.
The Department, working closely with NHS England, is taking forward a range of actions to further improve our ability to mitigate and manage shortages and strengthen our resilience. 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 solutions. However, medicine shortages are a complex and global issue and everyone in the supply chain has a role to play in addressing them, and any action will require a collaborative approach.
The Department also undertakes significant proactive risk evaluation to assess readiness against threats that could lead to potential disruption of medical supply chains. As part of this, the Department has participated in and led on a number of preparedness exercises, spanning across nationwide loss of power, cyber-attacks, and global pandemics, to test and improve our ability to respond to supply disruption.
In early August, the Department published a policy paper, Managing a robust and resilience supply of medicines, which provides greater transparency of the supply chains we rely on, the actions we take to protect patients from medicines shortages when they occur, and the steps we are taking to enhance resilience in our supply chains. This paper is available at the following link:
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion Preseli)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the actions under the Agenda for Change uplift and a fairer deal for nurses statement for NHS England published on on 12 February 2026 will lead to additional funding for the Welsh Government through the Barnett Formula.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Department for Health and Social Care received funding to deliver the actions under the Agenda for Change uplift and a fairer deal for nurses statement at Spending Review 2025, with the Barnett formula applying in the usual way, as set out in the Statement of Funding Policy.