Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of NICE's adoption of the EQ-5D-5L value set on the price of medicines with a quality of life benefit and no survival; and whether he plans to take steps to ensure that access to medicines which support workforce participation and productivity is not adversely affected.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is planning to adopt the EQ-5D-5L and has opened a consultation on the proposed changes to its guidance development manuals.

The consultation opened on 15 April and includes the proposed changes to NICE’s guidance development manuals and the results of two impact assessments, looking at how the EQ-5D-5L value set might affect:

• the outputs of the cost-effectiveness models that NICE uses in its evaluations, including estimates of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios; and
• the number of decisions qualifying for the severity modifier, and how it changes absolute and proportional QALY shortfall estimates.

NICE has also considered the potential impact of these proposed method changes on equalities and health inequalities, and it is inviting views on its conclusions.