Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential merit of the production of NICE evidence summaries for new and emerging antibiotics as a means of supporting the decisions of local stewardship and medicines management committees.

The Government is determined to use the best available evidence and guidance to support the policy of improving antibiotic prescribing. To this end, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will be publishing guidance this summer on systems and processes for effective antimicrobial medicine use. In addition, NICE is developing a new Quality Standard on Effective Antimicrobial Stewardship. Consultation on this new Quality Standard will begin in November 2015 with final publication scheduled for April 2016.