Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle medicine shortages.

I know how distressing medicine shortages can be for patients and their families. The Department works with the pharmaceutical industry, NHS, MHRA and others and uses a range of tools to help manage issues, such as securing supplies from alternative manufacturers, expediting deliveries and where necessary, enabling use of different products.

Supply disruption is unfortunately a common issue affecting countries around the world. Whilst issues can’t always be prevented, in the vast majority of cases they can be managed with minimal disruption to patients.