Asked by: Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of which medicines should be prioritised for reshoring or nearshoring of manufacture, and what estimate they have made of the investment required to achieve this.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to strengthening the United Kingdom’s domestic medicines manufacturing capabilities, now and in the future, using a range of levers to support the sector more broadly.
The key lever, the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF), builds on the success of three previous grant funding schemes, which are on track to provide over £520 million in private investment in medicine manufacturing and secure over 1,900 high-skilled jobs. The fund provides capital grants to support UK-wide investment in human medicines, as well as medical diagnostics and medical technology products.
One of LSIMF’s core objectives, that applications to the fund are scored against, is to strengthen the UK’s manufacturing capacity and capability to increase health resilience, as well as increasing economic growth. We define health resilience as the UK’s ability to withstand and recover from health emergencies such as pandemics, long-term healthcare challenges, and system shocks such as supply chain disruption.
Support has been provided across the medicines sector, including large pharmaceutical manufacturers, contract development and manufacturing organisations and generic manufacturers. This has bolstered the UK’s capacity in critical areas such as active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing and fill-finish capability. We do not hold a prioritised list of medicines for reshoring or nearshoring.
In 2024, the Department, on behalf of the Government, joined the European Union’s Critical Medicines Alliance which seeks to enhance the security and resilience of critical medical supply chains, encouraging actions such as greater collaboration, diversification, and boosting manufacturing of key products and APIs via reshoring and nearshoring.
Asked by: Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to create a list of critical medicines, and if so, when that list will be published.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has no plans to create or publish a list of critical medicines in the United Kingdom.
Increasing resilience of UK medicines supply chains remains a priority for the Government. As part of work underway to enhance processes for mitigating medicine shortages and to strengthen long-term resilience we have identified medicines which are deemed both clinically critical and have potentially vulnerable supply chains. This is not a static list but a process that is used to target the most impactful resilience activities and is regularly updated to take account of the ever-changing supply situation. This information is used to inform which product areas may require additional resilience measures, and to support our work, such as targeted seasonal supply monitoring.
Asked by: Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to set national targets for early and accurate dementia diagnosis, and to publish annual data on regional variations and performance.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the importance of a timely diagnosis, and remain committed to increasing diagnosis rates and ensuring people can access any licensed and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-recommended treatment, and support they need.
We remain committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate to the national ambition of 66.7%. NHS England continues to monitor the monthly dementia diagnosis rate and analyse trends at national, regional and integrated care board level.
Our health system has struggled to support those with complex needs, including those with dementia. Under the recently published 10-Year Health Plan, those living with dementia will benefit from improved care planning and better services.
We will also deliver the first ever Modern Service framework for Frailty and Dementia to deliver rapid and significant improvements in quality of care and productivity. This will be informed by phase one of the independent commission into adult social care, expected in 2026.
Asked by: Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to strengthen support for early dementia diagnosis, including through the enhancement of the NHS Health Check for those aged over 40, and the provision of risk reduction advice.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government and NHS England remain committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate. The new approach to planning guidance will improve the operating model, giving local leaders the freedom and autonomy they need to provide the best services to their local community, including those with dementia.
The NHS Health Check, a core component of England’s cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention programme, aims to prevent some cases of dementia in eligible people by making them aware that many of the risk factors for CVD are the same as those for dementia, and that what is good for the heart is also good for the brain. Through the programme, people aged 65 to 74 years old are also made aware of the signs and symptoms of dementia, and are signposted to local memory services where appropriate.
We are considering the guidance supporting the dementia component of the NHS Health Check, to ensure it reflects the most recent evidence and best practice.
Asked by: Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what support they are providing for research and development into new diagnostic technologies for dementia, including blood-based biomarker tests.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Government responsibility for delivering dementia research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation.
The Government’s Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme has invested £13 million into a range of biomarker innovation projects which include a broad range of biomarker technologies, ranging from an artificial intelligence tool designed to improve the accuracy of blood tests for dementia, to using retinal scans to detect early-onset dementia decades before symptoms. Some of these innovations could support improved diagnosis in the future, if validated for clinical use.
Alongside Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the People’s Postcode Lottery, the NIHR is funding the Blood Biomarker Challenge which seeks to produce the clinical and economic data that could make the case for the use of a blood test in the National Health Service to support diagnosis of dementia.
The NIHR has also invested nearly £11 million of funding to develop new digital approaches for the timely detection and diagnosis of dementia. Funded projects include a range of innovative tests such as spatial awareness, image recognition, hearing tests, and monitoring sleep disturbances.
The UK Dementia Research Institute, primarily funded by the Government, aims to increase our basic scientific understanding of dementia and its causes, unlocking pathways to developing ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat the condition. The NIHR is investing £20 million in the UK Dementia Research Institute over four years to enable discoveries to be taken out of the laboratory and into the lives of people that need them.
The NIHR continues to welcome funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including dementia. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.
Welcoming applications on dementia to all NIHR programmes enables maximum flexibility both in terms of the amount of research funding a particular area can be awarded, and the type of research which can be funded.