Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what types of commercial agreements NHS England and NICE will be required to consider as part of the conditional approval route in the new Cancer Drugs Fund.

NHS England has advised that it intends to publish new detailed standard operating procedures for the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) by June 2016. These will include any further general details concerning the nature of managed access agreements associated with a drug’s entry into the Fund.

The Accelerated Access Review (AAR) is actively engaging with NHS England to ensure alignment between the work of the review on speeding up access for National Health Service patients to innovative and cost effective new medicines and the CDF. The AAR is looking at the capability of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, NHS England and the Department to support innovative pathways for the assessment, adoption and reimbursement of treatments.