Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with representatives of NICE on increasing the capacity for undertaking highly specialised technology evaluations.

Departmental officials regularly meet with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) officials to discuss issues such as capacity for the development of guidance across all its guidance programmes, including as part of the annual business planning process. NICE does not operate a fixed capacity for the development of highly specialised technologies guidance and any topic that meets the topic selection criteria will be prioritised for guidance development.