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 help reduce the price of drugs procured by the NHS.

The United Kingdom has well established systems for controlling costs and ensuring we get value for money for spending on medicines. The UK has two mechanisms for controlling overall spend on branded medicines: the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing and access (VPAS) and the statutory scheme for branded medicine pricing. Both schemes apply UK-wide.

The VPAS caps sales of branded medicines to the National Health Service, with the cap growing by 2% each year. Sales made above this cap are paid back by pharmaceutical companies to the Department.

All new medicines and significant licence extensions in England are assessed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) which makes recommendations to the NHS on whether they are clinically and cost-effective. The NHS in England is legally required to fund medicines recommended by NICE within 90 days of a final recommendation being made, and offers a unique proposition for global life sciences companies, as with a single commercial deal a company can have access to a market of over 55 million people.

For unbranded generic medicines, the Department relies on competition in the market to keep prices down. This has led to some of the lowest prices in Europe and allows prices to react to the market. In an international market this ensures that when demand is high and supply is low, prices in the UK can increase to help secure the availability of medicines for UK patients.