Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made a recent estimate of the number and proportion of people who were given unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics.

No estimate has been made. Use of antimicrobials drives resistance, so it is important that they are used appropriately. The Government’s five year national action plan on tackling AMR focuses on optimising the use of antimicrobials, including a target to reduce antimicrobial use in humans by 15% by 2024.

The UK Health Security Agency has published tools and methodologies that can be used by clinicians to inform appropriate antibiotic use. This includes an audit tool to determine the appropriateness of antibiotic prescribing at the individual patient level in acute NHS hospitals.

There have been several campaigns to inform the public about appropriate use of antibiotics including the ‘Keep Antibiotics Working’ campaign, which was launched in 2017 and relaunched again in November 2019. Members of the public should continue to take their doctor's advice on whether they need antibiotics or not.