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 merits of new innovative payment models that would be required to support patient access to innovative and potentially curative gene and cell therapy.

NHS England and NHS Improvement published the ‘NHS commercial framework for new medicines’ on 23 February 2021. The framework sets out the routes to commissioning for medicines and states that the main route for commissioning medicines, which includes gene and cell therapies, is expected to be through a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) appraisal. The framework also sets out the commercial options that may be available to companies that NHS England and NHS Improvement and NICE may pursue in particular circumstances.