Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that patients with rare cancers are not without access to potentially life extending treatments while national appraisal and commissioning processes are ongoing.

The Government wants to ensure that all National Health Service patients, including patients with rare cancers, are able to benefit from rapid access to effective new medicines in a way that represents value to the taxpayer.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) aims wherever possible to issue recommendations for the NHS on new medicines close to the time of licensing so that patients have rapid access to clinically and cost-effective medicines. The NHS is legally required to fund medicines recommended by NICE within three months of the publication of final guidance. NHS England funds NICE-recommended cancer medicines through the Cancer Drugs Fund from the point of positive draft NICE guidance, bringing forward patient access by approximately five months than would otherwise be the case.

The measures that we announced in the Life Sciences Sector Plan will further streamline the licensing and NICE appraisal processes reducing the time between marketing authorisation and national funding decisions.