Medicines security should be treated as a national security issue - Lords Committee calls for proactive leadership from UK Government to tackle medicines supply and resilience of supply chains

Today, the House of Lords Public Services publishes its report, Medicines security - a national priority. The report finds that medicine supply shortages are not prioritised as the potential national security issue that they represent given the significant risk to people's health when they cannot access necessary medication.  In addition, the UK Government and the NHS are key to ensuring patients get the medicines they need, but there is a lack of oversight and coordination over medicine resilience. Key related findings include:

• The Government is not proactive in protecting the UK from fragile supply chains but rather focuses on reactive actions when shortages have already occurred. It does not effectively communicate shortages, or solutions, to frontline staff such as pharmacists and GPs.  

• There is little oversight or leadership from the Department of Health and Social Care of medicine stocks in the UK, nor the potential risks against critical medicines, whose absence would have significant impact on patients should they be in short supply.  

• There have been increasing concerns raised about medicines shortages with 73% of pharmacy workers in 2025 stating that ongoing issues with medicines supply are putting patients at risk.

• The majority of active ingredients required for medicines used by the NHS are controlled by China and India or other single sources. This leaves UK patients at risk from reliance on fragile global supply chains which could be affected by dynamic changes in geopolitics, trade or national disasters in these regions.

• 80% of the prescribed medicines the NHS uses are ‘generic' medicines, which are medicines that can be made by any manufacturer, but just a quarter of these drugs are made in the UK – with the rest being made largely in Europe and Asia.  

The report makes several key recommendations:

• The Government should accept that medicine security is, and should be treated as, a national security issue.

• The Government needs to improve how it shares information with care providers about shortages and availability of medicine throughout the supply chain, and ensure GPs, hospitals and community pharmacies have the tools they need to access medicines and support patients during shortages.

• Medicine supply should be included in the Government's National Risk Register, with regular preparedness exercises focused on large-scale medicine and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) failure.

• There must be a named individual with the appropriate seniority and authority to oversee resilience in the UK's medicine supply chain, working across Government to prioritise this issue and ensure necessary data is shared.

• The Government must boost the UK manufacture of generic medicines and ingredients used by the NHS. It should work with the pharmaceutical industry to identify and prevent shortages, through boosting medicines manufacturing and supply chain resilience both globally and once medicines have arrived on UK shores. The Government should clearly signal the importance of stable supply chains to the industry through resilience-focused procurement and contract management.

• The Government should identify and share which medicines they believe are critical for the UK through publishing a Critical Medicines List and API list based on clinical priority and supply chain vulnerability. This would be used to inform UK production, potential medicines for stockpiling and contract negotiations. The Government should set out how it plans to boost resilience for medicines on the Critical list. 

Baroness Morris of Yardley, who chaired the Committee during this inquiry said:

“We tend to only think of medicines and medicine supply when we are ill and need access to medication via our GPs, hospitals or pharmacies. However, the issue is of great importance because of the risk to people's health and wellbeing if medicine shortages occur. Our inquiry found that concerns have been raised about medicine shortages and there are issues with medicines resilience. However, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) are not particularly proactive in tackling these issues, and it is not given the attention needed given the enormous impact on the country if problems arise. There is a general lack of oversight and leadership to address current shortcomings across the medicines supply and manufacturing process. 

“We've set out a number of recommendations in our report which should help tackle the issues raised. Chief amongst these is the need for better communication of any shortages to GPs, hospitals and pharmacies so they can take necessary action to support patients and more importantly, the recognition that medicines supply chain resilience is a national security issue that should be on the national security risk register and prioritised accordingly. There needs to be senior government oversight of the issue with cross department coordination so that necessary action can be taken to both tackle issues when they occur and head off issues by taking timely preventative measures.  

“The Government also need to look more closely at how we can boost medicines manufacturing within the UK to reduce our reliance on single source supplies or an over reliance on China or India where the majority of our NHS medicines are made. This should ideally reduce our vulnerability to outside factors such as national disasters or trade or political disputes affecting increasingly fragile global supply chains. The Government needs to consider compiling a Critical Medicines List and then look at how we can increase the UK manufacture of the medicines on that list and shore up our resilience and stockpiling based on it. 

“Medicines are essential to the health of the nation and so we urge the Government to follow our recommendations to ensure the UK has the vital, strong, resilient medicines supply chain it needs to keep people healthy.”