Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to page 20 of the 2014 Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme, what recent assessment he has made of the compliance of NHS bodies with the requirement for the incorporation of NICE technology appraisal recommendations into local NHS formularies.

NHS England is specified in the 2014 Pharmaceutical Pricing Regulation Scheme agreement as the body responsible for ensuring there are no local barriers to ensuring access to technologies recommended in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) technology appraisal and highly specialised technology guidance.

NHS England has advised that there are a range of initiatives which assist NHS England in this obligation:

- NICE technology appraisalrecommendations are required to be incorporated automatically into relevant local medicines formularies;

- providers are required to publish local medicines formularies;

- the NICE Implementation Collaborative (NIC) examines barriers to the prompt implementation of NICE guidance;

- an innovation scorecard is published quarterly by the Health and Social Care Information Centre and tracks uptake of many NICE-approved medicines by the NHS;

- a joint NHS England and Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry work programme on medicines optimisation is ongoing, which seeks to improve outcomes and value from all medicines;

- NHS England works closely with Academic Health Science Networks to accelerate the adoption and diffusion of innovation.

The Department’s analysis of medicines spend for the first year of the PPRS shows that branded medicines spend grew by 8.2%, with new medicines on the Innovation Scorecard seeing growth of 18.4%. Further details have been published on the Government’s website at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/analysis-of-growth-in-branded-medicines-2013-to-2014

Commissioners are legally required to fund drugs and treatments recommended in NICE technology appraisal and highly specialised technology guidance within three months of NICE’s guidance being published. There is provision for this funding period to be extended where there are particular barriers to implementation within three months.