Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made a comparative assessment of the adequacy of availability of fampridine (fampyra) for patients across the four nations of the UK.

Health is a devolved matter and decisions on the availability of medicines in the devolved administrations are a matter for their own governments.

Ministers and Department officials have had no recent discussions with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) about access to fampridine. NICE’s updated guideline on the diagnosis and management of multiple sclerosis (MS) in adults, published in June 2022, recommends that fampridine should not be offered to treat mobility issues in people with MS as it is not found to be a cost-effective treatment at the current list price. NICE keeps its guidance under active surveillance and decisions on whether published guidelines should be updated in light of new evidence are taken by the NICE prioritisation board, chaired by the NICE Chief Medical Officer, in line with its published prioritisation framework. NICE has indicated that it has no current plans to review its recommendations on fampridine.