Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to make (a) single injection cancer treatments and (b) intra-beam radiotherapy available on the NHS.

Immunotherapy is a rapidly emerging field which encompasses a wide number of different treatment technologies, including the use of vaccines. The use of vaccines as a treatment for cancer is already established within routine clinical practice. An example of this is the use of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine to treat bladder cancer. NHS England has a well-established process for considering new treatments and would welcome new proposals. Details of the policy process can be found at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/key-docs/

The use of Intraoperative Radiotherapy is currently being considered by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for the treatment of early breast cancer through a Multi-Technology Appraisal (MTA). NICE recently commenced public consultation on its draft findings which can be found at:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/indevelopment/GID-TAG353/consultation/html-content

The consultation is due to be completed on 1 March 2017, with a committee hearing scheduled to take place on 9 March 2017. All commissioners are mandated to implement published final MTA findings.