Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on the length of appraisals conducted by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) under its cost-comparison appraisal process; and whether he has plans for NICE to align the timing of the outcomes of such appraisals with that of granting of marketing authorisations by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) aims, wherever possible, to issue recommendations for the National Health Service on whether new medicines should be routinely funded around the time of licensing, to support rapid patient access to clinically and cost-effective new medicines.

The NICE has introduced the cost-comparison process for the appraisal of lower risk treatments where a lighter-touch approach is considered appropriate. The cost-comparison process enables the NICE to make recommendations on medicines within 100 working days compared with 195 days for a standard appraisal, freeing up resources for more complex appraisals. In 2024, the NICE carried out appraisals through its cost-comparison process on average 83 days faster than its standard process.