Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria his Department applies to determine what goods qualify as essential health products.

The Department does not identify essential health products for policy purposes. It does, however, recognise a number of Category 1 goods – goods which are “critical to preservation of human or animal welfare and/or national security for the United Kingdom”.

The Department’s Category 1 products are human medicines, covering prescription-only, pharmacy and general sales list medicines, clinical trials and children’s vitamins; medical devices and clinical consumables; vaccines; nutritional specialist feeds, including infant milk formula and biological materials such as blood, organs, tissues and cells.