Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they support the proposal that NHS England will only pay for patients participating in data collection under the new NICE conditional approval route.

NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence have proposed that, where a drug is recommended for use within the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), its entry into the Fund would be subject to the company agreeing to fund the collection of a pre-determined data set, during a period normally lasting no longer than 24 months, and a commercial access arrangement which is affordable within the available CDF budget.

Access by eligible patients will not be restricted to the number of patients considered necessary for data collection, but any costs for treatment over and above this number will be paid for by the company.

At its meeting on 25 February 2016, the NHS England Board agreed a way forward which will see the new operating model going live on 1 July 2016.

The Accelerated Access Review is looking at ways to better use data on treatments and outcomes from initiatives, such as the CDF, to drive innovation, adoption and reimbursement of novel treatments.