Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to secure licences for existing off-patent drugs.

The Government does not normally apply for medicines licenses, which is rightly an obligation of the company who has developed the drug. The Secretary of State is the United Kingdom licensing authority for medicines and cannot become a routine applicant to himself nor can he become a routine participant in pharmaceutical markets which holders of licenses are obliged to do. The Government has not secured any licenses for off-patent drugs in the past five years.