Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps are being taken to ensure melanoma patients have access to the most clinically effective treatment options if they have (a) brain metastases and (b) previously taken part in a clinical trial.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended a number of drugs for use in the treatment of melanoma. National Health Service patients have a right in the NHS Constitution to drugs and treatments that have been recommended by NICE, where clinically appropriate.

NHS England has advised that it has carefully translated the evidence base on which NICE has based its recommendations of clinical and cost effectiveness for drugs and treatments for melanoma into practical clarifications which directly relate to how the recommended drug indication is incorporated into known treatment pathways in use in England.

Each set of clarifications is in keeping with the NICE recommendations within the marketing authorisation of the relevant drug.

The treatment criteria for both Cancer Drugs Fund and baseline-funded drug indications are set out in the National Cancer Drugs Fund List which is available at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/national-cdf-list-v1-15.pdf

Discussions are taking place with NHS regional and National Cancer Research Institute experts on melanoma on formulating chemotherapy algorithms for the treatment of advanced or metastatic melanoma. These discussions relate in part to the drug treatment of brain metastases and the need to preserve recruitment to clinical trials and whether the qualifications that NHS England has applied in terms of treatment criteria for melanoma drugs within their respective marketing authorisations should be changed.