Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to prepare for another global pandemic.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Ensuring the United Kingdom is prepared for a future pandemic is a top priority for the Government, and we are embedding lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic in our approach to pandemic preparedness. We aim to have flexible, adaptable, and scalable capabilities that can respond to any infectious disease or other threat, rather than relying on plans for specific threats.
The Government is committed to learning the lessons from the UK COVID-19 Inquiry to protect and prepare us for the future. On 16 January 2025, the Government published its response to the inquiry’s module one report on resilience and preparedness. A copy of the response is attached. The Department has committed, as part of this response, to publishing a new pandemic preparedness strategy that will show how we are embedding our new approach to pandemic preparedness.
In the 2024 Autumn budget, my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced that £460 million of investment has been allocated to strengthen the UK’s pandemic preparedness and health protection, including replenishing personal protective equipment, vaccine, and medicines stockpiles.
In autumn 2025, the Department and the UK Health Security Agency conducted Exercise Pegasus, a national exercise on the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic. It tested our ability to respond to a pandemic, involving all regions and nations of the UK and thousands of participants. The exercise has provided valuable experience which is being used to inform our strategy and planning. The Government has committed to communicating the findings through the post-exercise report this winter.
An established clinical countermeasures programme is a core component of our pandemic preparedness and set of response capabilities. These countermeasures include personal protective equipment and hygiene consumables, as well as vaccines and therapeutics, such as influenza antivirals and antibiotics.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Hayman of Ullock on 8 December (HL11969), what plans they have to restrict the import of animal products produced using antibiotic growth promoters, regardless of country of origin.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In line with the UK’s own domestic position on the use of antibiotic growth promoters, and considering our international obligations as a trading partner, the Government is engaging with all trading partners. This is to secure assurances that they have measures in place ensuring that antimicrobials used for growth promotion or yield enhancement have not been used in food-producing animals or animal products exported to Great Britain for human consumption.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Hitchin)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Chief Medical Officer’s publication entitled Annual report 2025: infections, published on 4 December 2025, if he will set out how the proposed regional infection groups will deliver consistent antimicrobial stewardship standards and infection management across local systems to support optimal patient care and to minimise the future risk of drug-resistant infections.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The United Kingdom’s 2024 to 2029 National Action Plan (NAP) to confront antimicrobial resistance (AMR) sets out a range of commitments and targets to mitigate the AMR risk, including to reduce antibiotic use in humans. Aligned to the NAP, NHS England is taking a range of steps to embed antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) within professional responsibilities across the National Health Service workforce.
This includes establishing professional accountability and leadership through regional AMS networks, embedding AMS into continuous professional development training programmes, and providing digital decision-support tools and national reporting on antibiotic prescribing targets.
As set out in the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report 2025, the formation of regional infection groups (RIGs) was recently proposed by the NHS England Infectious Disease Clinical Reference Group to embed AMS at a local level. NHS England is committed to introducing RIGs, which would collaborate with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to deliver local, data-driven AMS interventions that span community and secondary care settings.
It is envisaged that RIGs would be comprised of senior leaders across NHS Regional Teams, UKHSA, Regional Pathology Networks, Infection, Prevention and Control teams, and NHS Emergency Preparedness, Resilience & Response, organised according to regions or integrated care board (ICB) clusters. RIG initiatives would be shaped and informed by local, regional or ICB cluster priorities.
Through these measures, AMS is embedded in education, clinical practice, and regional governance, ensuring responsible prescribing, and safeguarding the effectiveness of antimicrobials for the future.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Hitchin)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Chief Medical Officer’s publication entitled Annual report 2025: infections, published on 4 December 2025, what steps he is taking to embed antimicrobial stewardship as a professional responsibility across the NHS workforce to prevent the over-prescription of antibiotics and other antimicrobials.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The United Kingdom’s 2024 to 2029 National Action Plan (NAP) to confront antimicrobial resistance (AMR) sets out a range of commitments and targets to mitigate the AMR risk, including to reduce antibiotic use in humans. Aligned to the NAP, NHS England is taking a range of steps to embed antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) within professional responsibilities across the National Health Service workforce.
This includes establishing professional accountability and leadership through regional AMS networks, embedding AMS into continuous professional development training programmes, and providing digital decision-support tools and national reporting on antibiotic prescribing targets.
As set out in the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report 2025, the formation of regional infection groups (RIGs) was recently proposed by the NHS England Infectious Disease Clinical Reference Group to embed AMS at a local level. NHS England is committed to introducing RIGs, which would collaborate with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to deliver local, data-driven AMS interventions that span community and secondary care settings.
It is envisaged that RIGs would be comprised of senior leaders across NHS Regional Teams, UKHSA, Regional Pathology Networks, Infection, Prevention and Control teams, and NHS Emergency Preparedness, Resilience & Response, organised according to regions or integrated care board (ICB) clusters. RIG initiatives would be shaped and informed by local, regional or ICB cluster priorities.
Through these measures, AMS is embedded in education, clinical practice, and regional governance, ensuring responsible prescribing, and safeguarding the effectiveness of antimicrobials for the future.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to align the UK’s import policy with forthcoming EU measures prohibiting products from regions where antibiotics are used for growth promotion.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government has begun negotiations with the EU on an SPS agreement to make agrifood trade with our biggest market cheaper and easier, cutting costs and removing barriers to trade for British producers and retailers.
The agreement will cover SPS standards and controls and also wider agrifood rules related to food labelling, organics, key marketing standards and compositional standards - as well as pesticides.
Detail as to what will be included in the scope of the agreement remains subject to negotiations, and we will not be providing a running commentary.
The use of antibiotics for growth promoters has been banned in the UK and the EU since 2006. With good farming practices, the UK does not consider that using antibiotics for growth promotion is necessary and strongly advocates for phasing out the use of medically important antibiotics for growth promotion globally, in line with Codex standards and WOAH guidelines.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many yellow card reports of (1) tinnitus (Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA) code 10043882), and (2) worsening of tinnitus (MedDRA code 10048029), the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency received in each year since 2014, and what medications those reported were linked to.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for ensuring medicines, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion meet applicable standards of safety, quality, and efficacy. The MHRA rigorously assesses the available data, including from the Yellow Card scheme, and seeks advice from the Commission on Human Medicines, the MHRA’s independent advisory committee, where appropriate, to inform regulatory decisions, including amending the product information.
The MHRA has received a total of 11,348 United Kingdom based reports through the Yellow Card scheme associated with reaction term tinnitus, including worsening of tinnitus, from 1 January 2014 up to and including 27 November 2025. The reports received between 2014 and 2025 were for a wide range of medicinal products which include antidepressants, hormonal medicines, vaccines, antipsychotics, antibiotics, cardiovascular medicines, drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, sedatives, drugs used to treat dementia and diabetes, drugs used to treat osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease, and pain. The following table shows a yearly breakdown of reports associated with tinnitus, from 2014 to 2025, and in total:
Year | Number of reports |
2014 | 147 |
2015 | 164 |
2016 | 230 |
2017 | 206 |
2018 | 197 |
2019 | 205 |
2020 | 212 |
2021 | 7,208 |
2022 | 1,248 |
2023 | 578 |
2024 | 495 |
2025 | 458 |
Total | 11,348 |
It is important to note that anyone can report to the MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme and the recording of these reports in the Yellow Card database does not necessarily mean that the adverse reactions have been caused by the suspect drug. Many factors must be considered in assessing causal relationships, including temporal association, the possible contribution of concomitant medication, and the underlying disease. We encourage reporters to report suspected adverse reaction reports, and the reporter does not have to be sure of a causal association between the drug and the reactions, as a suspicion will suffice.
The number of reports received cannot be used as a basis for determining the incidence of a reaction, as neither the total number of reactions occurring, nor the number of patients using the drug, is known. All fatal reports, including those reporting completed suicide, are assessed by the MHRA, and cumulative information is reviewed at regular intervals.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve (a) early detection and (b) surveillance of antibiotic-resistant infections.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Unified Infection Dataset (UID) supports early detection of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through epidemiological outputs, infectious disease surveillance, outbreak response, and allied research with rich linked data. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has developed innovative analytical tools for large datasets via the UID and the Enterprise Data Analytics Platform (EDAP). AMR-related data continues to be ingested into the EDAP, including:
The EDAP aims to deliver a strategic platform for data enrichment, data analytics, and data science for AMR and HCAI and will support streamlined and timely surveillance outputs to tackle AMR and improve public health.
The UKHSA’s Porton AMR network leads on the discovery and development of novel antimicrobials, optimising antibiotic combinations, vaccines, and non-traditional therapies. The UKHSA is also working on advancing AMR typing and whole genome sequencing reference laboratory services and providing clinical advice to support NHS England front line services dealing with AMR associated infections.
NHS England is streamlining diagnostic innovation through the cross-sector ‘Moving Forwards Infection Diagnostics’ events series. Engagement will inform an ‘infection diagnostics framework’ by 2027 and identify target product profiles for diagnostics needed in the National Health Service. A rapid review pipeline to identify optimal tests within the market and assess how existing diagnostics can be optimised is also being produced. These winter ‘Point of Care Testing’ pilots have been funded to further build the evidence base.
Asked by: Andy MacNae (Labour - Rossendale and Darwen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of introducing a screening programme for group B Streptococcus in pregnant women.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
On all aspects of population and targeted screening, Ministers are advised by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC).
The UK NSC last reviewed the evidence to screen for group B streptococcus (GBS) at 35 to 37 weeks of pregnancy in 2017 and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the benefits of screening would outweigh the harms.
This was because the test currently available cannot accurately distinguish between those mothers whose babies are at risk and those who are not.
This means that many women would unnecessarily be offered antibiotics during labour, with the balance of harms and benefits from this approach being unknown.
The National Institute for Health Research funded a large-scale clinical trial to compare universal screening for GBS against the usual risk factor-based strategy.
Recruitment to the trial ended in March 2024 and a report is expected in early 2026. The UK NSC Secretariat is in contact with the researchers. The UK NSC will review its recommendation considering the evidence from the trial, after the report is presented.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the UK Health Security Agency's news story entitled Nearly 400 antibiotic-resistant infections each week in 2024, published on 13 November 2025, what steps his Department is taking to tackle the higher rates of antibiotic-resistant infections in more deprived communities.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Actions taken to tackle higher rates of resistant infections in more deprived communities include a health inequalities outcome within the latest United Kingdom antimicrobial resistance (AMR) national action plan, which is available at the following link:
Commitments under this outcome aim to improve data reporting on health inequalities in AMR and antibiotic use, publish a toolkit of resources that supports organisations to develop interventions, and implement and evaluate interventions to address inequalities in AMR.
NHS England encourages regions and integrated care boards to focus on building trust to increase the uptake of vaccinations. They work with community and faith leaders particularly in areas of high deprivation, using a make every contact count approach.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many yellow card reports of increased sexual arousal (Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities code 10021679) the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency received each year since 2014, and what medications those reports were tied to.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
A total of 52 reports that describe increased sexual arousal suspected to be associated with the use of medicines or vaccines have been received through the Yellow Card scheme. The reports were received between 2014 and 2025 for a wide range of medicinal products which include antidepressants, hormonal medicines, vaccines, antipsychotics, antibiotics, cardiovascular medicines, drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, sedatives, drugs used to treat dementia and diabetes, and single reports for drugs used to treat osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease, and pain.
The term increased sexual arousal itself is not in the product information for any of the above classes of medicines, however terms such as increased libido and hypersexuality are reflected in product information for medicines used to treat Parkinson’s disease. The following table shows a breakdown of all spontaneous Yellow Card Reports the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) received from 1 January 2014 to 4 November 2025, where the MedDRA, a categorisation of medical terminology, Lowest Level Term (LTT) ‘increased sexual arousal’ was reported:
Year | Number of reports |
2014 | 1 |
2015 | 1 |
2016 | 6 |
2017 | 4 |
2018 | 1 |
2019 | 4 |
2020 | 6 |
2021 | 14 |
2022 | 5 |
2023 | 4 |
2024 | 1 |
2025 | 5 |
of | 52 |
In addition, the following able shows a breakdown of all spontaneous Yellow Card Reports the MHRA received from 1 January 2014 to 4 November 2025 where the MedDRA LLT ‘increased sexual arousal’ was reported, broken down by substance:
Year | Substance | Number of reports |
2014 | TRAZODONE | 1 |
2015 | CITALOPRAM | 1 |
PROPRANOLOL | 1 | |
2016 | AMOXYCILLIN | 1 |
ARIPIPRAZOLE | 1 | |
CLAVULANIC ACID | 1 | |
ETHINYLESTRADIOL | 1 | |
FLUPENTHIXOL | 1 | |
METRONIDAZOLE | 1 | |
NORELGESTROMIN | 1 | |
SERTRALINE | 2 | |
SOLIFENACIN | 1 | |
2017 | CITALOPRAM | 2 |
MEMANTINE | 1 | |
SERTRALINE | 1 | |
2018 | SERTRALINE | 1 |
2019 | FLUOXETINE | 1 |
LISDEXAMFETAMINE | 1 | |
METHYLPHENIDATE | 1 | |
SERTRALINE | 1 | |
2020 | CANDESARTAN | 1 |
DULOXETINE | 1 | |
ETHINYLESTRADIOL | 1 | |
LEVONORGESTREL | 1 | |
LISINOPRIL | 1 | |
RISPERIDONE | 1 | |
TERIPARATIDE | 1 | |
ULIPRISTAL | 1 | |
VENLAFAXINE | 1 | |
2021 | ARIPIPRAZOLE | 1 |
ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 | 2 | |
CIPROFLOXACIN | 1 | |
CITALOPRAM | 2 | |
ESTRADIOL | 1 | |
FLUCLOXACILLIN | 1 | |
OESTRIOL | 1 | |
PAROXETINE | 1 | |
SERTRALINE | 2 | |
TOZINAMERAN | 2 | |
TRAZODONE | 1 | |
2022 | ARIPIPRAZOLE | 1 |
DONEPEZIL | 1 | |
ELASOMERAN | 1 | |
OESTRIOL | 1 | |
TOZINAMERAN | 1 | |
2023 | DIAZEPAM | 1 |
DOXYCYCLINE | 1 | |
LISDEXAMFETAMINE | 1 | |
MEMANTINE | 1 | |
2024 | CLONAZEPAM | 1 |
2025 | ARIPIPRAZOLE | 1 |
FLUOXETINE | 1 | |
LINAGLIPTIN | 1 | |
PRAMIPEXOLE | 1 | |
TIRZEPATIDE | 1 |