Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department's policy is on Vertex (a) waiving its confidentiality clause on the negotiations around NHS access to the drug Orkambi and (b) disclosing details of its offer to NHS England.

It is not in the Department’s gift to impose any requirement upon Vertex to waive its confidentiality clause or to disclose details of any offer in the negotiations around National Health Service access to the drug Orkambi. However, Ministers at the department have publicly urged Vertex to consider the offer made by NHS England and to waive confidentiality so that we can all see, in the interests of transparency, the kind of prices it is seeking to charge the NHS.