Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the £10 million allocated to the MHRA in March 2023, what progress has been made on accelerating routes for bringing innovative medical products developed onto the market.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) greatly welcomed the £10 million of funding announced by HM Treasury in March 2023, which has enabled the MHRA to make progress on the Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP).

The ILAP harnesses the collective expertise of the regulatory and health technology assessment systems and National Health Service bodies, with the aim of supporting medicines from an early stage through to patient access more quickly. Since its launch in 2021, 166 Innovation Passports have been awarded.

The United Kingdom’s life sciences ecosystem within which the ILAP sits has evolved, with new regulatory initiatives such as the international recognition procedure. On Wednesday 6 November 2024, the ILAP partner organisations published a statement of policy intent on the relaunch of the ILAP. The new ILAP will continue to target timely patient benefit, take forward lessons learnt from the ILAP to date, and respond to the needs of our fast-paced life sciences sector by providing a more compelling offer of support to the medicine developer. The new ILAP will open to applications in March 2025, with full details of the pathway to be published in January 2025.