Breast Cancer: Innovative Drugs

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. The delay in bringing a new drug to the market can very often be between 12 and 14 years, which is a huge amount of time. Part of the reason for that is indeed the regulatory process. The whole purpose of the Accelerated Access Review is to truncate that time. The report talks about reducing for some drugs the time it takes to bring them to market by up to four years, which would be very considerable progress. In terms of international regulatory bodies, if one takes the EMA in Europe and the FDA in the US, clearly they do work together at one level but probably not closely enough, and I suspect that there is too much duplication in regulation. Certainly, as we leave the European Union, we need to be very careful that we do not have a duplicatory regulatory system in this country.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that since 2014 the Government have received nearly £1.5 billion from the branded pharmaceutical sector as part of the PPRS to hold down pharmaceutical costs. Why is not some of that sum being used to fund innovative drugs for breast cancer?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I think it is a mistake to regard the PPRS and the savings made in that scheme as a separate pot of money. Any savings generated from the PPRS are funnelled back into the NHS. As for new innovative drugs, the cancer drugs fund has been changed substantially and one should regard it now largely as an incubator fund with the same purpose as the Accelerated Access Review, which is to bring forward new drugs more quickly.