Drugs: Prices

(asked on 16th May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the draft resolution for consideration by the World Health Assembly in May 2019 on improving the transparency of markets for medicines, vaccines and other health-related technologies, if the Government will withdraw its support for suggested amendments to remove every mention of high prices.


Answered by
Seema Kennedy Portrait
Seema Kennedy
This question was answered on 21st May 2019

The United Kingdom has a long-established and globally-recognised track record of assessing the price of new, innovative medicines by their clinical benefit and value, rather than by their development costs or international reference prices.

The UK will engage constructively with the talks at the World Health Assembly to achieve the best outcome for people here and globally, including in low and middle income countries. Pricing arrangements are the responsibility of Member States and are highly context specific, but the Department supports information sharing and mutual learning initiatives, where appropriate, in seeking to improve value for money for country procurement budgets.

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