Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the merits of making prescriptions available for biologics for (a) severe asthma and (b) asthma that is difficult to control, available within secondary care.

Clinicians are responsible for making prescribing decisions for their patients, taking into account the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s technology appraisals and guidance on management of asthma and the local commissioning decisions of their respective clinical commissioning groups.

Prescribing of biologics is co-ordinated through severe asthma centre multi-disciplinary team to ensure current treatments are optimised and all appropriate treatments are considered with use of biologics as part of the treatment review for each patient. The biologic prescribing pathway is one of the areas of focus for the NHS England Severe Asthma Accelerated Access Collaborative.