Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what guidance he issues on the commissioning of novel antibiotics designed to treat life-threatening infections at a national level through NHS England's specialised commissioning system.

Generally antibiotic use is determined locally and is driven by microbiology departments and by local antibiotic resistance patterns. There are two specific areas of specialised commissioning where provisions for antibiotics are relevant. A national policy for cystic fibrosis is already available (http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/a01-ps-a.pdf) and a policy covering treatment of multi drug resistant tuberculosis (TB) is being developed. This new policy should be introduced from April 2015 and hopes to set policy for Bedaquiline and possibly Delamanid, two drugs recently launched into the United Kingdom market for multidrug resistant TB.