Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will direct NICE to conduct a full technology appraisal of the Sativex form of nabiximols to allow the drug to be prescribed on the NHS.

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.