Branded Medicines (NHS)

Roger Williams Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

Time is short, so I shall keep my remarks brief, but it is a shame to truncate such an important debate on a matter that touches many lives.

The availability of medicines in our national health service affects millions of families throughout the country and with that in mind I must thank the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) and congratulate him on securing the debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that the debate was heard. I know that the right hon. Gentleman tried to make progress on these issues when he was Health Secretary and I am sure that he is frustrated by the lack of progress in more recent years. In addition, I am sure that he will be amazed and potentially aghast when he hears that I agree with a great deal of what he said.

As I say, this is an important issue affecting millions of patients who rely on these drugs everyday. Members on both sides of the House want to see progress on improving access and ensuring that more people get the drugs they need. The issue was brought into sharp focus recently when, in September, NICE announced that it was not going ahead with its proposed value-based assessment reforms. That this was in part due to a lack of consensus in stakeholder consultation submissions to the proposals serves to highlight how complex an issue it is. We all accept that.

There are clear problems with access to medicines, as demonstrated clearly by recent publications from the Office of Health Economics and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. I want to make a number of points from those publications in my speech. There are issues, too, about the proposed changes to the cancer drugs fund, which have been highlighted by the concerns of charities such as Breast Cancer Care, that I shall come to later. None of them will be a surprise to the Minister.

A vital tool in improving access to treatments is the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme, the latest iteration of which came into effect this year. Some questions need answering about it. In 2010, the Conservative manifesto included a commitment to increasing access to drugs. The commitment was echoed and bolted down in the coalition agreement, which stated:

“We will reform NICE and move to a system of value-based pricing”.

As we have heard and discussed, value-based pricing was meant to be introduced in January this year when the drug pricing agreement between the Government and pharmaceutical industry expired, but despite the comments in the coalition agreement, when the new drug pricing agreement, the 2014 pharmaceutical price regulation scheme, was published in November 2013 it contained no plans either to introduce value-based pricing in 2014 or on the promised reform of NICE’s processes towards evaluating how treatments would be made available on the NHS.

When proposals were finally brought forward this year, they included not value-based pricing but value-based assessment, which is altogether different. The plans would have included two new modifiers entitled “burden of illness” and “wider societal impact”. The burden of illness modifier would have replaced the current end-of-life criterion. The burden of illness criterion that would have been introduced is already largely counted in the current quality-adjusted life-year measures. There are also wide-ranging issues with the other suggestions, so it was no surprise that, after lengthy consultation, NICE confirmed that the plans to introduce the changes had unfortunately been shelved. What this means in practice, though, is that the Government have failed to deliver on a key commitment, the fulfilment of which many people were looking forward to. I should be grateful if the Minister would reflect on progress to date.

Access to medicines is key because the UK is lagging behind other countries. From analysis of more than 60 medicines launched in the UK, the Office of Health Economics found that people living in the UK are less likely to have access to a new medicine for the first five years after its launch than people living in other countries. That shows clearly that reform is vital.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the real problems is that some of these treatments, such as abiraterone, are not available in Wales but are available in England? That is leading to people leaving Wales and taking up residence in England in order to get that treatment.

[Mr Reed]

I am grateful for the question. Without doubt, there are issues that need to be addressed on both sides of the border.

One major part of the issues that we are discussing today is the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme, which caps the expenditure of the NHS on branded medicines. It has existed since the 1950s. It is an excellent scheme in principle but must work properly in practice. Given that there has been essentially no parliamentary debate on the PPRS, I should be grateful if the Minister would explain a bit more how the new agreement is intended to work in practice.

As I understand it, if the NHS exceeds the agreed expenditure, as the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire said, the money is rebated back to the Treasury. But given that the outgoing moneys will presumably be taken from clinical commissioning group prescription budgets, can the Minster explain how the CCG in question will actually feel the benefit of the PPRS? If the rebate stays in the centre, rather than being reimbursed to CCGs, how will the PPRS work as a tool with which to increase access to treatments? Has the Minister considered how the rebate might be better used for incentivising improvements in access? What can be done to speed up drug accessibility and reduce the duplication by CCGs of work already undertaken by NICE? That is clogging up the system and slowing down access to new medicines.

The Minister will be aware that at Health questions last week I raised some of the genuine concerns of patients, such as Clive Stone in the Prime Minister’s constituency, and charities, such as Breast Cancer Care, about the cancer drugs fund. As the Minister knows, the overspend in the cancer drugs fund last year and the way in which it operates has led to its being under considerable pressure, and many in the industry believe it to be unsustainable. The former Health Secretary has been absolutely clear that it was always intended to be a bridge, and I welcome his candour on that.

The issue with any new medicines, which I know NHS England is now looking at, is how to balance clinical benefit and cost-effectiveness. None of us would pretend that that is an easy task, but it is clear that it needs to be done in a much clearer and more transparent way than is currently proposed, and I should be grateful if the Minister would set out how patients will be involved in the evaluation of drugs and represented in that process at the meeting of the cancer drugs fund clinical panel later this month.

One way to improve access to medicines would have been to back the Off-patent Drugs Bill that was before this House only a few weeks ago. That would have improved access to many drugs for many people but, as the Minister is aware—he was speaking opposite me at the time—the Government refused to support it. Will the Minister again take the time to explain why the Government opposed that piece of legislation, which originated from one of their own Members? It was certainly supported by Labour Members. The innovative medicines review has the potential to do real good in this area. I should be grateful if the Minister would speak to that, too, in some detail in the time available for his speech.

I realise that time is short, so I will draw my remarks to a close. We all want to see improvements to access and we are all desperate—I use the word in its accurate sense—for progress on this, so will the Minister set out what action he will take over the next few months and what progress he realistically expects to make before the election?