Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he will publish the evidence he has concerning B12.

The Department has received a small number of letters about the availability of injectable B12 over the counter and the issue was also raised at a meeting between the B12 Deficiency Group and the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health (Jane Ellison) in July 2016. All authorised medicines for injection are classified by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency as prescription only. Whether or not a patient could self-administer a prescribed medicine would be a matter of clinical judgement for the patient’s doctor to determine.

The diagnosis and treatment for B12 deficiencies is well established and reported in the British Committee for Standards in Haematology (BCSH) guidance document, Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Cobalamin and Folate disorders. The guidance was last updated in May 2014 and can be found at the following link:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjh.12959/epdf

The BCSH operates independently of the Department and NHS England and produces evidence-based guidelines for both clinical and laboratory haematologists on the diagnosis and treatment of haematological disease, drawing on the advice of expert consultants and clinical scientists practicing in the United Kingdom.