Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether doctors are free to prescribe bisphosphonates in the treatment of early stage breast cancer despite the fact that it is not presently licensed for that purpose.

Neither the Department nor NHS England have made an assessment of the number of lives that might be saved per annum from licensing bisphosphonates for the treatment of early post-menopausal breast cancer.

Doctors can already prescribe a drug outside its licensed indications where they judge it to be the most clinically appropriate treatment for an individual patient.