EXCLUSIVE

Pharmacy minister Alistair Burt has admitted medicine shortages cause harm to patients, while insisting the issue is not a “huge problem”.

Mr Burt told C+D that “of course” shortages cause harm – a u-turn on the stance of his predecessor Earl Howe, who last year controversially rejected MPs' calls for the government’s definition of harm to reflect the anxiety caused by shortages.

Supply problems are a “matter of real importance” and the government’s advisory group is conducting “ongoing work to understand how it might be prevented”, Mr Burt said in an exclusive interview last month (October 22).

However, Mr Burt stressed that “evidence shows that shortages are not a huge problem” and he is not aware the issue is "so overwhelming that [additional] work needs to be done”.

Open to any new solutions

Referring to the all-party pharmacy group's call for the government to do more to reduce the “inconvenience, stress and sometimes harm” caused by shortages, Mr Burt told C+D that Westminster is “very open to listening to everyone with any new ideas” about how to tackle the problem. 

“It isn’t a case of the government renewing its attention to it. The government has never taken its eye off this,” Mr Burt said. 

“The vast majority of treatments get through in a timely fashion. Clearly it is important we make sure that happens all the time,” he said.

Mr Burt added that drug shortages occur from “time to time, in almost any system across the world”.
 

What do you think of Mr Burt's attitude towards shortages?

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