Mark Durkan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mark Durkan on 2016-01-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions the his Department, NHS England and NICE have had on the effect of proposed Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) changes on patients prescribed current CDF treatments who will not receive interim funding under that proposed new scheme.

George Freeman

NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence are currently consulting jointly on draft proposals on the future direction of the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF). The consultation document states that all patients receiving treatment funded through the CDF on 31 March 2016 will continue to receive treatment until the point that they and their consultant agree that it is appropriate to stop.

NHS England has advised that the aim of the future CDF is to help patients receive new treatments with genuine promise, while real world evidence is collected for up to two years on how well they work in practice. This will then help determine whether the treatment should be accepted for routine use in the National Health Service in the future. It is not possible to make comparisons between the current and future CDF until such time as the consultation has concluded and the responses reviewed.

The consultation was published on 19 November 2015 and is open until 11 February 2016. Further information is available at:

www.engage.england.nhs.uk/consultation/cdf-consultation

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