Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the NHS receives a fair price for medicines that are developed from monoclonal antibodies.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) appraises new medicines for the value they offer to the National Health Service. Products that receive a positive appraisal from NICE are required to be funded by the NHS within three months of final guidance. The Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme 2014 makes provisions for manufacturers and sponsors to submit proposals for patient access schemes (PAS) to the Department as part of NICE appraisal. These schemes involve innovative pricing agreements designed to improve cost effectiveness and facilitate patient access to specific drugs or other technologies and many monoclonal antibodies have PAS in place.

For monoclonal antibodies that are licensed to treat cancer the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) is a source of funding in England, which provides patients with faster access to the most promising new cancer treatments, helps to ensure more value for money for taxpayers and offers pharmaceutical companies (who price their products responsibly) a new fast-track route to NHS funding. The CDF process includes the option for NHS England to hold individual commercial negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to ensure a fair price is agreed upon for cancer treatments.

Where appropriate NHS England’s Commercial Medicines Unit will use competitive tenders to obtain value for money pricing for monoclonal antibody based medicines used by hospitals.