Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent manufacturing issues causing medicines shortages and to mitigate their impact.

There are over 14,000 medicines and the majority are in good supply. While we can’t always prevent supply issues from occurring, we have a range of well-established processes and tools to manage them when they arise, to mitigate risks to patients. These include close and regular engagement with suppliers, use of alternative strengths or forms of a medicine to allow patients to remain on the same product, expediting regulatory procedures, sourcing unlicensed imports from abroad, adding products to the restricted exports and hoarding list, use of Serious Shortage Protocols, and issuing National Health Service communications to provide management advice and information on the issue to healthcare professionals including pharmacists, so they can advise and support their patients. Further information can be found in A guide to the systems and processes for managing medicines supply issues in England’.

The resilience of United Kingdom supply chains is a key priority, and we are continually learning and seeking to improve the way we work to both manage and help prevent supply issues and avoid shortages. The Department, working closely with NHS England, is taking forward a range of actions to improve our ability to mitigate and manage shortages and strengthen our resilience. These actions were set out in a policy paper published in August 2025, Managing a robust and resilient supply of medicines.

As part of that work, we continue to engage with industry, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and other colleagues across the supply chain as we progress work to co-design and deliver solutions. However, medicine shortages are a complex and global issue and everyone in the supply chain has a role to play in addressing them, and therefore continued action requires a collaborative approach.