Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government which specific CAR-T treatments are available for individuals with low grade lymphomas.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England funds the use of licensed medicines that have been recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), or the off-label use of licensed indications that have been approved via the NHS England clinical policy process.
NICE has evaluated and recommended several CAR-T therapies for both high-grade and low-grade lymphomas, some of which are recommended for a period of managed access, for instance:
To support implementation of NICE recommendations, NHS England sets clinical treatment criteria to ensure that treatments are made available to those intended by the NICE Guidance. Clinical input helps set the clinical and patient treatment criteria based on the NICE committee deliberations, how the treatment will be used within the treatment pathway, and the evidence base considered by NICE and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what support they are providing to NHS Trusts to restore or replace paused CAR-T clinical trials, to prevent patients being left without viable treatment pathways.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to turbocharging clinical research and ensuring that all patients, including those with cancer, have access to cutting-edge clinical trials and innovative, lifesaving treatments.
Decisions about whether a specific clinical trial should be paused are the responsibility of the study sponsor and research team, who closely monitor any reported patient safety concerns and other data that could impact a decision for an individual trial to be halted.
To support National Health Service trusts to deliver clinical trials, the Department funds research and research infrastructure across England through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, which supports patients and the public to participate in high-quality research, including on CAR-T therapy.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have carried out an impact assessment on the effect of halted CAR-T clinical trials, and whether they will publish that assessment.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to turbocharging clinical research and ensuring that all patients, including those with cancer, have access to cutting-edge clinical trials and innovative, lifesaving treatments.
The Department has not carried out an impact assessment on the effect of halted CAR-T clinical trials. This is because decisions about whether a specific clinical trial should progress or not are the responsibility of the study sponsor and research team involved, who closely monitor any reported patient safety concerns and other data that could impact this decision.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what the current NHS eligibility criteria are for CAR-T therapy for both high-grade and low-grade lymphomas.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England funds the use of licensed medicines that have been recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), or the off-label use of licensed indications that have been approved via the NHS England clinical policy process.
NICE has evaluated and recommended several CAR-T therapies for both high-grade and low-grade lymphomas, some of which are recommended for a period of managed access, for instance:
To support implementation of NICE recommendations, NHS England sets clinical treatment criteria to ensure that treatments are made available to those intended by the NICE Guidance. Clinical input helps set the clinical and patient treatment criteria based on the NICE committee deliberations, how the treatment will be used within the treatment pathway, and the evidence base considered by NICE and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of infusion capacity within the NHS for blood cancer treatments.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
No assessment has been made of infusion capacity within the National Health Service for blood cancer treatments. However, it is a priority for the Government to support the NHS to diagnose and treat cancer, including blood cancer, as early and quickly as possible. The Department is committing to this by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, to support increased capacity.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure haemato-oncology services have the capacity to plan and adopt new innovations in the treatment of blood cancer.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service, through the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Services, collects information on how many people in England have blood cancer, labelled as haematological neoplasms. This data supports service provision and commissioning in the National Health Service, clinical audits, and public health and epidemiological research, all of which contributes to improved outcomes for cancer patients, including blood cancer patients.
The Department is committed to implementing the recommendations of Lord O'Shaughnessy’s review into commercial clinical trials, making sure that the United Kingdom leads the world in clinical trials, and ensuring that innovative, lifesaving treatments are accessible to NHS patients, including those with blood cancer.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking steps to prioritise the use of cost and clinically effective cancer medicines that result in fewer patient visits to hospital.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) makes recommendations on whether all new medicines, including cancer medicines, should be routinely funded by the National Health Service based on an assessment of their costs and benefits. The NHS in England is legally required to fund medicines recommended by the NICE, and cancer medicines are eligible for funding from the Cancer Drugs Fund from the point of positive draft NICE guidance.
In determining whether a medicine represents a clinically and cost effective use of NHS resources, the NICE takes into account the impact of new medicines on health outcomes and the health and care system, including where costs may be incurred and where savings may be realised.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the 10-Year Cancer Plan for England will ensure that blood cancer patients receive the most optimal treatment, regardless of where they live.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has been clear that there should be a national cancer plan, and we are now in discussions about what form it should take, including how we will ensure that cancer patients across England receive the most optimal treatment. We will develop and publish the 10-Year Health Plan before publishing a new national cancer plan, and will provide updates in due course.
It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer, including blood cancer, as early and quickly as possible, and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes for all patients across England.
The Department is committing to this by improving waiting times for cancer treatment, starting by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, to support faster diagnosis and access to treatment. In addition, NHS England has implemented non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with non-specific symptoms, or combinations thereof, that can indicate several different cancers. This includes leukaemia, which can present non-specific symptoms, such as unexpected weight loss and night sweats. From NHS England’s national evaluation, blood cancers are one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.
The Department is committed to implementing the recommendations of Lord O'Shaughnessy’s review into commercial clinical trials, making sure that the United Kingdom leads the world in clinical trials, and ensuring that innovative, lifesaving treatments are accessible to NHS patients, including those with blood cancer.
In September 2024, NHS England announced a new targeted treatment, Quizartinib, to be prescribed to newly diagnosed patients with a specific type of leukaemia, boosting their chance of remission and long-term survival, made available through NHS England’s Cancer Drugs Fund, which fast-tracks new innovative cancer treatments into standard care. This followed a previous announcement in August 2024, announcing the new treatment, Zanubrutini, for those with marginal zone lymphoma, which could halt the progression of their cancer and provide an alternative to further rounds of chemotherapy.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether immunocompromised people eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine this winter, who have had an adverse reaction to Spikevax in the past, will be compensated if advised by local services to pay privately to access a Comirnaty vaccine.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Guidance from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) states that there are very few individuals who cannot receive the COVID-19 vaccines approved in the United Kingdom. Anyone concerned about possible reactions to a vaccine should in the first instance speak to the clinician responsible for their care for advice. Published UKHSA clinical guidance for health professionals and immunisation practitioners on COVID-19 vaccination includes guidance for the management of patients with a history of allergy, including circumstances where a person may be referred to an expert allergist and, after a review of the individual’s risks and benefits of vaccination, and where it is indicated, they could then be vaccinated in hospital under clinical supervision. NHS England will continue to follow this clinical guidance and offer the appropriate vaccination to those who are eligible, including those who are immunocompromised, under expert supervision in a hospital setting, where appropriate.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether all integrated care boards in England have been supplied with stock of both the Spikevax and the Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccines this winter.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) manages the central storage and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines for the United Kingdom’s programme. For the autumn and winter programme, the UKHSA has supplied both the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine (Spikevax) and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (Comirnaty) to the National Health Service.
NHS England works closely with the regional and integrated care board (ICB) teams to ensure they deliver the right vaccine to the right place at the right time. Every ICB has received both vaccines as part of the autumn and winter campaign.