The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
I say from the outset that there are 22 people in the Chamber for this Adjournment debate. Normally, it is me, the proposer of the debate and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I say to the hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) that it is nice for other people to be here with us. I will say at the start that I will not take any interventions. A lot of Members have come to listen to this debate, and they want to hear the Minister. There are things that I as the Minister need to put on the record, and I am going to put them on the record before we finish at 8.5 pm.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate and for giving me the opportunity to speak once more on an important issue that matters to me and my constituents as much as it does to his. May I again place on the record the sterling work undertaken by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust? Its support for cutting-edge research, campaigns to drive up standards of care and support for the CF community is fabulous. We are lucky to have it.
Once more, we have heard hon. Members make compassionate—that is a very good word—pleas urging an immediate resolution in the ongoing discussions between NHS England and Vertex to make Orkambi available on the NHS in England. To the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), who raised this in an intervention, I say that, absolutely, I will make sure my officials are talking to the permanent secretary—the very hard-working and probably overworked permanent secretary—at Stormont, because we need to make sure we have a joined-up approach. I wholeheartedly agree with everyone’s calls for exactly that: every effort must be made to ensure that precision medicines are made widely available to cystic fibrosis patients.
Many people have raised concerns this evening and in many other places about NICE’s process for the assessment of drugs for rarer diseases. I said this in the last debate in Westminster Hall and I will say it again: it is a key commitment of this Government to ensure that people with comparatively rarer conditions, such as CF, get the same quality, safety and efficacy in medicines as those who have more common conditions. I assure the House that where a company is willing to set a fair price for a drug, NICE’s technology appraisal process has been proven to be suitable for the assessment of drugs for rare diseases.
Steve Brine
I said I would not give way, and I will not do so.
I thought the hon. Member for Bury South made a good point when he said if NICE did not exist, we would have to invent it. I agree. Indeed, NICE has been able to recommend a number of drugs for patients with rare diseases through its technology appraisal process, including pirfenidone for pulmonary fibrosis and mifamurtide—why they cannot produce easier names, I will never know—for a rare form of bone cancer, to name but two.
I know that it is distressing, to put it mildly, for patients and their families, as well as campaigners, when NICE is not able to recommend a treatment. Unfortunately, there will continue to be occasions when NICE is not able to a recommend one for routine use on the NHS. As we know, NICE has not so far been able to recommend the use of Orkambi for treating CF, because the benefits were not sufficient to justify its considerable cost. At list price, the cost per quality-adjusted life year of Orkambi is many times higher than the upper end of the threshold used by NICE in deciding whether to recommend a treatment. NICE does not stick rigidly to a cost per QALY threshold, and it applies plenty of flexibility in deciding whether to recommend treatments where the decision is a borderline one. However, it must be stressed that the cost per QALY is not an arbitrary measure, but a tool to assess what the impact would be on other NHS patients if the NHS were to spend money on a particular treatment.
I want to talk about the discussions with Vertex. As Members know, NHS England has been in intensive discussions with Vertex to encourage it to lower the cost of Orkambi to a level that would allow NHS England to fund its use without adversely impacting other patients. I and the Under-Secretary of State Health, Lord O’Shaughnessy, who sits in the other place—he leads on this area for us—have been keeping an extremely close eye on these discussion, as I promised the House in the Westminster Hall debate I would do. As Members will remember, we wrote to Vertex in April, urging it to commit to pricing that is responsible and proportionate. I have the personal assurance from NHS England that it is committed to seeking a way forward in these negotiations, and I think it has shown flexibility.
Sadly—I am not ratcheting up the rhetoric or name-calling, as this is just fact—Vertex has been unwilling to price responsibly thus far, which has, as we have heard today, meant that patients have missed out on two years of treatment. Vertex claims that it has made the NHS
“the best offer in the world”—
but it has yet to substantiate that claim. I would challenge Vertex to waive confidentiality—which it can do: I cannot—so that we can all see, in the interests of transparency, the kind of prices it is trying to charge the NHS and, as a result, our constituents.
As mentioned this evening by the hon. Member for Bury South, NHS England wrote to Vertex yesterday to set out a proposed five-year deal with an option to extend, which provides the potential for Vertex to secure revenues from the NHS in the region of £500 million over the next five years. NHS England has made the content of this proposal public, to give patients and taxpayers the opportunity to make a judgment about the fairness of this offer. The proposed deal, if accepted, would guarantee immediate and expanded access, as clinically appropriate, to the two licensed medicines, Orkambi and Kalydeco—as was said earlier, Orkambi is not the only show in town. It would also provide immediate access for Symdeco from the date it is licensed for use in the UK, which is expected in coming weeks.
If Vertex is not willing to accept the deal, it must return to discussions with NICE and go through that process. Let me be clear that I truly hope it does not come to that, but until Vertex adjusts its prices, NICE will not be able to recommend the drug’s use. I repeat that we have put a figure on the table. The ball is in Vertex’s court. It has made a preliminary response today, saying that it is good to see that NHS England is negotiating. NHS England has been negotiating throughout. It is not Ministers who are negotiating on this.
Steve Brine
I will break my rule and give way to the hon. Gentleman who secured the debate.
Mr Lewis
That is kind of the Minister and I thank him for his serious response to the debate.
We said the last time we met that we did not want Ministers to keep an eye on the issue: we wanted Ministers to be actively engaged in it. The Minister gave us an assurance that his colleague would be actively engaged, not keeping an eye on it. Today, we repeat that we do not want NHS England and the drug company left in a room alone to work this out, otherwise we will be back here in six months’ time. We expect the Secretary of State to be in the room with the chief executive of NHS England and the drug company to bang heads together and come up with a satisfactory conclusion. Will the Minister respond directly to that point and give us an assurance that there will be political involvement and engagement in the negotiations, because we have waited for too long?
Steve Brine
When I say “keeping an eye”, I do not mean it like keeping an eye on the football scores on a Saturday afternoon. It is just my turn of phrase. Ministers are keeping very close tabs on this and making sure that NHS England is in no doubt that we want it to come to a conclusion with Vertex. But it takes two to tango, as we are seeing in another negotiation right now. We need Vertex to tango. The ball is in its court, and it is time to return it.
I stand by what I said at the last debate: it is vital that we go through the right process here. There is a process. I do not think for one minute that the Opposition are suggesting that if they were in government, Ministers would be making these decisions like Roman emperors, as that would be totally wrong. It is an important principle that the NHS must ensure that healthcare services get the best value for patients, and that is the approach NHS England is rightly taking.
NHS England has proven that it can strike innovative deals, working with the life sciences sector to make treatments available for patients, while securing fair value for taxpayers—our constituents. That includes hundreds of patients with multiple sclerosis who now benefit from a treatment called cladribine and the use of pertuzumab for breast cancer. It is important for me to be clear with hon. Members that Ministers should not make a decision on behalf of NHS England, which has the clinical expertise and the powers to purchase medicines.
I put it on record again that I urge Vertex to accept the proposal presented by NHS England, or it will only make those living with cystic fibrosis suffer. Yes, of course there are discussions among the new ministerial team. I spoke to the new Secretary of State just this evening in the Lobby. He is taking an incredibly close interest in this issue, less than a week into the job, and I pay tribute to him for that. I ask Vertex to recognise NHS England’s flexible approach. It would represent the largest ever financial commitment of its type in the 70-year history of the NHS. I certainly hope that they can reach a deal. Many, including in my own Winchester constituency, are counting on them.
Question put and agreed to.