Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he plans to allow routine access on the NHS in England to the medicine Sativex.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published a clinical guideline on multiple sclerosis in 2014 that does not recommend Sativex (nabiximols) as a clinically and cost effective use of National Health Service resources. This is available at:
www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg186/chapter/1-recommendations
Therefore we have no plans to ask NICE to carry out a technology appraisal of Sativex for the treatment of spasticity in multiple sclerosis.
It is for commissioners to decide whether to fund this treatment for individual patients.