Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if his Department will publish a (a) timeline, (b) methodology and (c) work programme for the evaluation and development by NHS England of draft commissioning policies for (i) medicines used outside of their licence, (ii) licensed medicines and (iii) service specifications for possible funding from April 2017.

NHS England has drafted a set of ‘methods documents’ to further refine the process by which new or revised clinical commissioning policies and service specifications are developed for specialised services. This covers the use of both licenced and unlicensed medicines, and has been refined based on clinical and wider stakeholder feedback during 2015/16.

Since the methods documents need to include the process by which proposals requiring additional investment will be submitted for prioritisation, the methods documents will be finalised and made available to stakeholders following the outcome of the current public consultation on the method to be used by the Clinical Priorities Advisory Group when comparing competing specialised services priorities for National Health Service funding.