Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to permit people with terminal illness to try medications approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence but not for their condition.

Prescribers are able to offer any treatment that they consider to be the most clinically appropriate care for the individual, subject to the NHS commissioner agreeing to funding. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) makes recommendations for the NHS on whether all new medicines and significant licence extensions for existing medicines should be routinely funded by the NHS based on an assessment of their costs and benefits.

The NHS in England is legally required to fund medicines recommended by NICE. In the absence of NICE guidance on the use of a medicine, NHS commissioners are expected to make funding decisions on individual treatments based on an assessment of the available evidence.