Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve access to SGLT2 inhibitor treatments for people with chronic kidney disease from underserved communities.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body responsible for developing authoritative, evidence-based recommendations for the National Health Service on whether new, licensed medicines represent a clinically and cost-effective use of resources.

The NICE has been able to recommend two SGLT2 inhibitors, empagliflozin and dapagliflozin, for treating chronic kidney disease, subject to specified clinical criteria. The NHS in England is legally required to fund medicines recommended in a NICE appraisal, usually within three months of final guidance, so these treatments should now be available for healthcare professionals to prescribe to NHS patients in line with the NICE’s recommendations.

In September 2024, the NICE added links to the relevant technology appraisal guidance on SGLT-2s, for empagliflozin, which has a NICE reference number of TA942, and for dapagliflozin, which has a NICE reference number of TA775, to the guideline Chronic kidney disease: assessment and management. This is to provide easy access to the relevant appraisal guidance at the right point in the guideline, and to help users find the information more easily. Further information on the guidance for chronic kidney disease, specifically recommendation 1.6.9 on SGLT-2s, is available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng203/chapter/Recommendations#pharmacotherapy

The NICE publishes a range of resources to support services in putting its recommendations into practice. The NICE has also published a general practice indicator on chronic kidney disease and SGLT2 inhibitors. NICE indicators measure outcomes that reflect the quality of care or processes, and can be used in a number of different settings to support high quality care, including the uptake of NICE-recommended treatments, such as SGLT2 inhibitors.

The responsibility for implementing NICE guidance rests with the relevant commissioner.