Oral Answers to Questions

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

Funding for nurses has increased over the past six years. It is because of the sixth largest increase in the NHS budget that we can guarantee that nursing numbers will remain in that strong position for the remainder of this Parliament. That will include specialist nurses. My role is to make sure that as many nurses as possible get additional training so that we have a wider and richer skills mix, specifically so that nurses can develop their careers—something that I am afraid was often made more difficult rather than easier under the previous career structure.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to encourage the use of biosimilar medicines in NHS treatment.

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

The biosimilars—the generic versions of biologic products—represent part of the extraordinary range of new drugs that are becoming available for the benefit of our patients. The Government are committed to ensuring access to drugs for UK patients at the highest level of quality and safety, and to ensuring that effective biosimilar medicines are available. That is why we are leading, not just here but in Europe, the regulatory regime through the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency as the lead assessor and rapporteur. In the NHS, the chief pharmaceutical officer, Keith Ridge, and the commercial medicines unit in my directorate have put together a framework agreement for biosimilars, and through the medicines optimisation programme we are looking specifically at biosimilars, and we have set up a national biosimilars medicines group.

[Dr Mathias]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. May I ask also that where NHS pharmacists are involved in oncology clinics, there is a higher prescribing of biosimilars? What steps are in place to encourage more oncology clinics to involve NHS pharmacists at the start of the patient’s treatment journey?

[George Freeman]

Not surprisingly, my hon. and, in this field, learned Friend makes a very important point. We have set up a number of initiatives to that very end: to make sure that our pharmacologists and pharmacists in the system are alert and have all the information they need to increase the prescription of biologics and the generic versions, biosimilars. I will happily write to her, describing a range of initiatives that are in place which we are pursuing to that end.