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 support NHS Trusts to speed up access to innovative therapies before MHRA approval through Early Access Programmes.

NHS England has issued national policy guidelines on free of charge schemes, which are available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/free-of-charge-foc-medicines-schemes-national-policy-recommendations-for-local-systems/

The only free of charge schemes supported by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and NHS England are those through the Early Access to Medicines Scheme. Other, company led early access programmes operate under the unlicensed medicines scheme, but these are not approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, nor supported by NHS England nationally. Participation in such programmes is decided at an individual National Health Service trust level, in the form of an agreement between the trust and a pharmaceutical company.