Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate NHS England has made of the projected savings from the introduction of dose banding of chemotherapy drugs without affecting quality of care.

NHS England has advised that the dose banding initiative forms part of its Specialised Commissioning Improving Value programme and can be considered as an expansion of current practice and direction of travel. The dose banding scheme has been primarily designed to deliver improvements in safety and quality of care.

NHS England advises that the scheme does also have the potential to deliver efficiencies for hospitals and its initial estimate is that this could release up to £5 million of value to the health system.