Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many cancer medicines are expected to be given a conditional approval by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the first year of operation of the Cancer Drugs Fund.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has advised that it is unable to provide a forecast as the number of technology appraisals published during the first year of the new Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) will depend on a number of factors including the value proposition put forward by manufacturers.

NHS England has advised that it envisages, under the new arrangements for the CDF, that a greater number of cancer drugs will be funded from baseline commissioning. This will be as a consequence of more appropriate pricing arrangements proposed by pharmaceutical manufacturers and better evidence being available through the Fund as to longer term patient outcomes.