Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of delisting from the Cancer Drugs Fund on the availability of cancer drugs in the United Kingdom, in comparison with (1) the level of access in 2010 when the Fund was introduced, and (2) availability levels in comparable European countries.
Neither the Department nor NHS England has made any such assessment.
Decisions to de-list drugs were made taking account of the need to ensure the limited resources of the Fund are used most effectively. Advances in medical science mean that new and exciting cancer medicines are emerging all the time and we want people to have access to these too.
The Government established the Cancer Drugs Fund to ensure that cancer patients in England have better access to life-extending and improving drugs not routinely funded by the NHS.
Between October 2010 and March 2015, the Fund has helped over 72,000 cancer patients.