Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure UK blood cancer patients can access effective new therapies that are available to patients overseas but have been subject to NICE terminated appraisals.

Decisions on whether new medicines should be routinely funded by the National Health Service in England are made on the basis of recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), following an evaluation of a treatment’s costs and benefits.

The NICE process relies on the company to make an evidence submission. When the company does not make an evidence submission, the NICE is unable to develop recommendations, and the appraisal is terminated. NHS England’s default position is not to routinely commission a treatment where the company has not engaged in the NICE appraisal process. This is to avoid a potential pathway for circumventing the NICE process, that ensures value for the taxpayer.

The Government encourages all companies to engage constructively in the NICE appraisal process. The NICE is able to recommend most medicines for use in the NHS where companies engage in the process, and has recommended 79% of cancer medicines that it has appraised. This includes many medicines for blood cancers, that are now available to NHS patients, including through the Cancer Drugs Fund, which makes promising new medicines available to patients while further evidence is collected to address uncertainties in clinical and cost-effectiveness.