Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the criteria and processes are for a technology to be considered for NHS England's evaluation through commissioning programme.

NHS England has advised that it has a Standard Operating Procedure in place to support the development, consideration and implementation of individual schemes within its overall Commissioning through Evaluation programme. Potential schemes may come from a number of sources. All will need to demonstrate that they can generate valuable new data on a specialised treatment that is not routinely commissioned on the basis of currently available evidence on clinical and cost effectiveness, but nonetheless shows significant promise as a future treatment.