Oral Answers to Questions

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

It is important to outline that for the first time this Government have put in place, via section 42 financial agreements with trusts where there is a requirement for interim financial support, measures that will ensure that trusts are held to account for delivering efficiencies—for example, reducing agency staffing costs, improving procurement practice, more efficient estate use and land disposal, and pay restraint of very senior managers. I am therefore confident that the local NHS can continue to deliver efficiencies to direct money to front-line care.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

11. Whether it remains the policy of the cancer drugs fund to provide drugs which NICE has rejected for general use in the NHS.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (George Freeman)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his tireless campaigning on the issue of cancer drugs. I can assure him that the cancer drugs fund now administered by NHS England continues to fund effective cancer drugs which have been not been recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Over 60,000 patients in England have benefited from the fund since October 2010. That is why we announced a £160 million boost to the fund earlier this year.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

Will my hon. Friend look again at the CDF’s proposal to delist 42 cancer drugs, including Abraxane, which was put on the list only nine months ago and is the first new drug in nearly 40 years to produce an extension of life for pancreatic cancer patients?

[George Freeman]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his notice. I have spoken to NICE. It is appraising the use of Abraxane for pancreatic cancer and has not yet published its final guidance. It would not be appropriate for me to intervene at this point. Obviously, we respect NICE’s clinical independence. Abraxane is available through the CDF for patients meeting specific clinical criteria. I understand that the NHS England’s CDF panel plans to reassess the inclusion of Abraxane in the national list, but no decisions have yet been made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

There are huge pressures in the NHS. That is why we have put a record £700 million into the NHS to help it to get through this winter. May I gently suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he should not try to politicise every single operational problem? When the NHS is all about politics, patients get forgotten—as he should know, because that is what happened when he was Health Secretary. Whether in Medway, Colchester, Burton or George Eliot, patients were forgotten because for Labour it was politics before patients every time.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

T6. Will the Secretary of State look again at the funding formula for hospital trusts so that some adjustment can be included to recognise the issues in trusts such as University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust which cover large and difficult geographical areas?

[Mr Hunt]

I recognise those issues, and I am very happy to take that suggestion away. I particularly want to put on the record that the scare stories put out by Labour in Lancaster about the potential closure of Royal Lancashire Infirmary are false. It is totally irresponsible to scare people in Lancaster in that way.