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The government has said it is “progressing a range of measures to strengthen its understanding of supply chain pressures” to mitigate the impact of medicines shortages.
In its response to a House of Lords Public Services Committee report on medicines security, published on 15 April 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said: “Manufacturers are legally required to report potential supply issues at least six months in advance, where possible, and DHSC is reviewing enforcement mechanisms to improve compliance and timeliness.”
In its report published on 4 February 2026, the Lords committee said that medicines availability should be treated as a national security issue.
It also said that the UK government and NHS often react to supply problems after they have already happened, arguing that there is “little oversight or leadership from the DHSC”.
In response to suggestions that the government should create and publish a critical medicines list, the DHSC referred to the global risk register launched in 2020 and said that it “draws on information on medicines licensed in the UK to map manufacturing touch points within the supply chain”, which is “used to help understand medicines supply chains vulnerability and risk”.
The impact on medicine supplies is considered in the National Risk Register (NRR), the DHSC said.
“[The] DHSC undertakes significant proactive risk evaluation to assess readiness against any threats on the NRR that could lead to potential disruption of medical supply chains,” it added.
“This includes through large-scale preparedness exercises, to continually improve our understanding of critical vulnerabilities.”
The DHSC added that it disagrees with the House of Lords Public Service Committee’s conclusion that the government does not see the UK as a competitive place for generics manufacture.
“We are committed to a thriving UK life sciences sector that encompasses branded and generic medicines,” it said.
Commenting on the government’s response, Tase Oputu, president of the Royal College of Pharmacy, said: “While it’s positive that the government recognises the importance of medicines security, pharmacy teams continue to face persistent supply disruptions on the frontline. Medicines shortages directly impact patient care and safety, with pharmacists spending increasing time sourcing alternatives and supporting patients when treatments are unavailable.
“We need to move beyond reactive management towards a proactive, UK-wide strategy, with better data sharing, clearer communication and greater flexibility for pharmacists to make safe and appropriate substitutions.”
Malcolm Harrison, chief executive of the Company Chemists’ Association, said the response “fails to address the main challenge facing the supply of over 1 billion NHS prescribed medicines in primary care — the medicines people are prescribed by their GP and collect from their pharmacy”.
“The response does provide some solutions for dealing with shortages in primary care once they have occurred; however, it does not address how to build longer-term resilience in the supply chain, to prevent shortages in the first place,” he said.
Mark Samuels, chief executive of Medicines UK, said: “The government has made important investment commitments to support generic manufacturing in the UK, which are necessary but not sufficient. Given the growing geopolitical volatility, we need the life sciences sector plan to keep pace and treat resilience as a top priority. The global instability triggered by the Middle East conflict underscores why the UK must act now to protect the medicines the NHS relies on — 85% of which are off-patent.
“Strengthening resilience means creating the right incentives for domestic manufacturing and ensuring the UK is attractive to suppliers, but it also requires deeper international cooperation. Our free trade agreements with the EU and India must evolve to recognise medicines supply as a critical negotiating priority. The EU has spent years developing its Critical Medicines Act, yet resilience is not one of the pillars of the UK’s life sciences sector plan. Given the increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, that gap is deeply concerning.”
