Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has a policy on whether the Government has a duty to ensure the right to access medicines as part of its obligations under the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

National Health Service commissioners are legally required to fund treatments recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) through its technology appraisal and highly specialised technologies programmes. This is reflected in the NHS Constitution as a right to drugs and treatments that have been recommended by NICE.