Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that patients with incurable secondary breast cancer are able to access new life-extending treatments.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body responsible for developing authoritative, evidence-based recommendations for the National Health Service on whether new medicines represent a clinically and cost-effective use of resources.

To enable rapid access for NHS patients to new and effective life-extending treatments, NICE aims, wherever possible, to issue recommendations on new medicines close to the point of licensing.

NHS England is legally required to fund the use of NICE approved cancer medicines from the date of positive draft guidance, and the Cancer Drugs Fund provides £340 million of ringfenced funding to support patient access to the most promising new cancer medicines while further evidence is collected on their use to address clinical uncertainty.

NICE has recommended 24 out of the 25 breast cancer treatments it has assessed since April 2018.