Business of the House

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

As the hon. Lady knows, personal independence payments are designed to compensate people for the additional living costs incurred as a result of their disability. If she knows of cases where she believes there to be a systemic problem with how awards are assessed, she is certainly welcome to draw them to my attention, and I will pass them on to the relevant Ministers, but it is surely right for the Government to concentrate on enabling disabled people who wish to work to find employment, as record numbers are now doing, while also helping people with those additional costs.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House arrange for a debate on the availability of high-cost drugs for children with rare medical conditions? A young child in my constituency suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, but a consultation is taking place about the withdrawal of the drug Sarepta, which has dramatically improved his life. I am sure there are many other such conditions, of which I am not aware, for which such drugs may or may not be available to families. This is a really urgent matter that affects many children and others across our country. The Leader of the House needs to talk to Ministers in the Department of Health to ask them to come to this House to discuss and debate with us the availability of funding for such high-cost drugs.

[Mr Lidington]

If the hon. Gentleman sends me a note about the particular constituency case, I will pass it on to the Health Secretary. As he will understand, the general principle to which we and the previous Labour Government adhered is that decisions about the availability of drugs to treat unusual conditions should be determined either by NICE nationally or by local commissioners, looking always at the clinical effectiveness of those drugs. I do not think it would be right to go back to a system in which Ministers, perhaps influenced by the political voices of whichever campaign shouted the loudest, took these decisions, instead of the expert bodies.