Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the evidence that the Department of Health and Social Care used to support the statement in the consultation on the Statutory Scheme to control the cost of branded health services medicines that investment in research and development in the UK was not a "net benefit".

The approach to assessing the potential impacts on investment within the statutory scheme’s impact assessment followed well-established precedent and is in line with the Green Book paragraphs 6.5 and 6.6. As such, the impact assessment considers spillover benefits of investment, with a literature review suggesting an estimated mean benefit of 34% of the overall investment, but does not account for these within the net present value calculation due to investment being one of several possible company responses to change in profitability.