Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps he has taken to encourage a higher uptake of regular diabetes health checks for eligible patients.

Improving the uptake of annual diabetes health checks recommended by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is a key primary care metric in the NHS Oversight Framework, which is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/nhs-oversight-framework-2025-26/

The framework sets out how NHS England will assess providers and integrated care boards, to identify where support is needed and promote improvement.

The annual checks are based on NICE’s nine recommended care processes to manage diabetes and to reduce the risk of complications. NHS England is also working closely with National Health Service systems to monitor the improvement of achievement rates in delivering the annual diabetes health checks. To help deliver this, NHS England has recently launched a new National Diabetes Audit Care Processes and Treatment Targets dashboard to support systems to benchmark and improve delivery of the health checks.