Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when his Department asked NICE to produce a clinical guideline and quality standard on adult hearing loss; and when he expects NICE to produce those documents.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) was asked to develop a clinical guideline and quality standard on adult hearing loss in 2012.

NICE has advised that the clinical guideline is currently scheduled for development from spring 2016 and currently anticipates that this will be published in autumn 2018. A quality standard on hearing loss based on the clinical guideline will follow.