Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 23 February (HL14441), what assessment they have made of the impact of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on generalised anxiety and panic disorder on access to treatment for marginalised groups.

The Department has made no assessment of the impact of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on generalised anxiety and panic disorder or on access to treatment for marginalised groups.

NICE keeps its published guidelines under active surveillance and decisions on whether they should be updated in light of new evidence are taken by the NICE prioritisation board in line with its published prioritisation framework. NICE’s prioritisation board will be considering whether the guideline on generalised anxiety and panic disorder should be updated following a letter from the UK Council for Psychotherapy.