Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Government has made an assessment of the potential effect of the decision to remove access to vitamin D on prescription on the long-term bone health of people who cover all of their skin.

As part of the NHS England consultation ‘Conditions for which over the counter items should not routinely be prescribed in primary care: A consultation on guidance for CCGs’, NHS England has published a full Equality and Health Inequalities Impact Assessment which covers groups protected by the Equality Act 2010. A copy of the document is attached.

In the summer months most people should be able to get all the vitamin D they need from sunlight on the skin. However, it is also found in some foods – oily fish, red meat, liver, egg yolks and fortified foods, such as most fat spreads and some breakfast cereals.

The Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances states that vitamins and minerals should be prescribed only in the management of actual or potential vitamin or mineral deficiency, and are not to be prescribed as dietary supplements. We understand that NHS England’s current consultation is in line with this. Prescribing vitamin D for maintenance would be classed as a treatment for prevention or as a dietary supplement.