Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, which Clinical Commissioning Groups have a policy of not accepting sponsorship from drug companies and similar organisations; and whether his Department plans to regulate or stop such sponsorship arrangements.

NHS England does not collect data centrally on which clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have a policy of not accepting sponsorship from drug companies and similar organisations. NHS England published statutory guidance on managing conflicts of interest for CCGs in June 2017 which aims to support CCGs to identify and manage a range of conflicts of interests, which is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/revised-ccg-coi-guidance-jul-17.pdf

This guidance addresses the issue of sponsorship. In addition, NHS England published system-wide guidance in February 2017 on managing conflicts of interest in the NHS which is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/guidance-managing-conflicts-of-interest-nhs.pdf