Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the policy paper entitled 2024 voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth: summary of the heads of agreement, published on 20 November 2023, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that people with less common conditions are not disproportionately impacted by additional rebates for older medicines.

Commitments in the current voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing and access around patient access and uptake for innovative medicines have had a substantial positive impact on the speed of medicines access in England, ensuring that National Health Service patients benefit from cutting-edge treatments including personalised CAR-T cancer therapies, lifechanging treatments for rare conditions, and lifesaving gene therapies. The new voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth agreement will continue to build on these significant achievements, for example, through the piloting of new approaches for paying for ground-breaking advanced therapy medicinal products.

We do not expect disproportional impacts on people with less common conditions resulting from these policies. Provisions in the scheme allow for companies to apply for price increases should supply of products be otherwise uneconomical. Under specific circumstances an adjusted ‘Top-up Payment Percentage’ can also be considered for other older medicines where there would otherwise be a negative impact on patients.