Dan Jarvis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if his Department will take steps to ensure that the proposals to more closely align the approval process for the new cancer drugs fund with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence do not limit access to potential life-saving treatments such as Avastin for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

George Freeman

Since October 2010, the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) has helped over 84,000 people in England in accessing life-extending cancer drugs that would not otherwise have been available to them.

NHS England is responsible for the operational management of the Fund and has consulted, jointly with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, on new arrangements for the CDF which will go live on 1 July 2016.

NHS England has advised that, under these new arrangements, it envisages 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.