Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she is taking steps to help limit the costs of pharmaceutical products.

A series of voluntary agreements between the Government and the pharmaceuticals industry have existed since 1957 to control National Health Service spend on branded medicines. The current scheme came into effect at the start of 2019 and will last until the end of 2023. Agreement has been reached in principle with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry on a successor scheme, the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth (VPAG), which is set to save the NHS £14 billion over five years in medicines costs. The Department also has a broadly equivalent Statutory Scheme for branded medicine pricing which applies to companies that do not opt into the voluntary scheme.

For unbranded generic medicines, the Department relies on competition to keep prices down, allowing prices to react to the market. In an international market this ensures that when demand is high and supply is low, prices in the United Kingdom can increase to help secure the availability of medicines for UK patients.