Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to maximise supply of plasma-derived products, including immunoglobulins and albumin, for medicines that have the potential to improve outcomes for patients.

In February 2021, the Government lifted a ban on using plasma from donors in the United Kingdom for immunoglobulin medicines, following a review by the independent experts of the Commission on Human Medicines.

Now the ban has been lifted, plasma from UK donors can again be used to manufacture these life-saving immunoglobulin medicines for National Health Service patients, reducing the reliance on imports.

The Department, NHS Blood and Transplant, NHS England and the devolved administrations are working together to create a long-term domestic supply of plasma. Three plasma donor centres in Reading, Twickenham and Birmingham are now collecting plasma. A fractionator has been appointed to manufacture this plasma into medicines and we expect shipments to start to the fractionator in summer 2024 with the medicines being made available exclusively to NHS patients from early 2025. This will allow the UK to achieve 25% self-sufficiency with the ambition of further increasing to above 30% in subsequent years.