Health: NICE

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend, with her experience, is of course quite right. I am told that it costs upwards of $1 billion to develop a new molecule and bring it to the market. It is a very expensive process. That is recognised in the freedom of pricing that currently exists for drug companies at launch and in the patents that they are able to enjoy in subsequent years.

[Lord Crisp]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I was in the Department of Health at the time that NICE was created. If the Minister accepts that the NHS, which spends upwards of £11 billion a year on drugs, is right to have a clinically-led method of assessing whether they work satisfactorily, will he confirm—there seems to be some confusion—that that will not be replaced by some hundreds of separate ways of doing the same thing? Will he also confirm that, whatever new arrangements he has in mind, the Government will speed up the process? There is sometimes that complaint about the NICE process at the moment.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we have been very clear that NICE, which enjoys international pre-eminence in the evaluation of drugs and health technologies, will continue to have an important expert advisory role, including the assessment of clinical benefits for new medicines. The noble Lord will know, I am sure, that in recent years NICE has done a lot to speed up its evaluations of new medicines and has introduced end-of-life flexibilities, for example, which have meant that patients have had increased and improved access to those new medicines.