Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of benefits of the use of (a) prebiotics and (b) probiotics in the NHS.

The Department’s Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances (ACBS) has made an assessment of the benefits of the use of prebiotics and probiotics.

NHS England and NHS Improvement, in partnership with NHS Clinical Commissioners, carried out a public consultation between December 2017 and March 2018 on reducing prescribing of over the counter medicines for minor, short-term health concerns. Probiotics were included in the consultation proposals as items of limited clinical effectiveness which are of high cost to the National Health Service.

Following the consultation, in March 2018, NHS England published guidance for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) on conditions for which over the counter items should not routinely be prescribed in primary care. This guidance included a recommendation advising CCGs that probiotics should not be routinely prescribed in primary care given the limited evidence of clinical effectiveness. The clinical working group advised that there is currently insufficient clinical evidence to support prescribing of probiotics within the NHS for the treatment or prevention of diarrhoea of any cause.