Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to increase the availability of medicine supply in (a) Selby and Ainsty constituency and (b) nationally.

The Department works at a national level to address medicine supply issues and help prevent, manage, and mitigate medicine shortages. Medicine supply problems can occur for several reasons; for example, they can be due to manufacturing difficulties, regulatory problems, problems with the supply of raw materials, sudden demand spikes or from issues which are related to the distribution of the product.

The production of medicines is complex and highly regulated, and materials and processes must meet rigorous safety and quality standards. Occasionally, the National Health Service experiences temporary shortages of specific medicines.

We know how distressing the possibility of shortages can be and we have well-established processes for working with the pharmaceutical industry, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, NHS England, the devolved governments and others operating in the supply chain to help ensure patients have access to the treatments they need.