Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of NHS England having secured lower prices for the latest Hepatitis C drugs, whether they expect that progressively more patients will be treated in 2016–17 and future years.

The Department’s Commercial Medicines Unit has recently concluded a tender which has resulted in some reductions in the cost of new hepatitis C drugs. These, and future reductions, support NHS England’s plans to increase treatment rates. NHS England has funded providers to treat 10,000 patients in the financial year 2016-17, and is expecting to treat more patients in the second half of the financial year. NHS England is already planning to increase treatment in 2017-18 to 12,500 patients, and is working with stakeholders to develop plans for a Strategic Multi-Year Procurement which aims to further improve the cost of these treatments and the opportunity to roll out treatment further.