Health: Multiple Sclerosis

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am pleased to say that the number of specialist nurses for multiple sclerosis in the UK has risen from 80 in 2002 to 245 currently. I hope that my noble friend will agree with our view that local healthcare organisations, given their knowledge of the healthcare needs of their local populations, are the people best placed to determine the workforce needed to deliver safe and effective patient care within the available resources. However, it is of interest that NHS England’s service specification for specialised neurology does specify that nurse specialists should be involved in the care of people with multiple sclerosis.

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, 11 drugs are now available for remitting and relapsing multiple sclerosis, three or four of which have been approved only in the past two or three months, which is great news. Is there any chance that these new drugs will be included in the risk-sharing initiative with industry?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I think that the answer is almost certainly no because the risk-sharing scheme initiated under the previous Government is quite complex to administer and we would need to be persuaded that the administrative burdens associated with it were worth while. Now that we have the NICE process, it is probably best that NICE should look at these drugs in the context of its new clinical guideline, which is what the stakeholder groups thought was preferable.