Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the sample size from which NHS England concluded that second stem cell transplants for patients with blood cancer will be one of the lowest cost benefit priorities for treatment.

NHS England has advised the Department that specialised services policy proposals are built on the findings of independent reviews of published evidence. In the case of the proposal for second stem cell transplants for relapsed disease, the evidence review identified relevant peer-reviewed international studies – including data from the British Society for Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation - from 2005 relating to around 5,000 patients. As with all policy propositions, the draft policy and evidence review which supported it was subject to public consultation.