Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he expects the first pilots of the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Innovation Fund on reimbursement models to incentivise the development of new classes of antibiotics to begin.

The Global Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Innovation Fund is a £50 million investment over five years to tackle AMR, with the aim of attracting significant additional investment internationally to stimulate global research. It is not looking at reimbursement models to incentivise the development of new classes of antibiotics or planning to fund pilots at this stage.

Domestically, the Department is working with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry to develop a new reimbursement model for antimicrobials, and has secured broad agreement to principles that would permit a model to ‘de-link’ company revenues from sales. The aim of this work is to support good antimicrobial stewardship. Discussions with a number of leading pharmaceutical companies have highlighted challenges in evaluating antimicrobial medicines, and the Department is working closely with industry partners to address these.