Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions Ministers of his Department have had with their counterparts in the devolved administrations on development of new antibiotics and encouraging innovation in such development through reform of evaluation and reimbursement mechanisms.

Discussions between Departmental officials and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry concerning pricing and reimbursement models for antibiotics are ongoing and the topic will in due course feature in the established cross-government dialogue on antimicrobial resistance. Additionally, I am planning United Kingdom-wide collaboration as part of the first meeting of Ministers with portfolio responsibility for life sciences across all devolved administrations of the UK.