Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 12 February 2026 to Question 110592, whether his Department has made an estimate of the earliest date nerandomilist could become available to patients after NICE publishes its final guidance.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Subject to licensing, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) currently expects to publish final guidance on nerandomilast in September 2026. In formulating its recommendations, NICE's independent Appraisal Committee expects to hold its first meeting on 15 July. If the Appraisal Committee is able to recommend nerandomilast, NICE would aim to publish its final draft guidance within three weeks of the committee meeting.

If recommended in final NICE guidance, the National Health Service would be required to fund treatment within three months, although some medicines are provided sooner through support from the Innovative Medicines Fund.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has assessed the potential merits of introducing measures outside of the Pension Schemes Bill to protect the real terms value of pre-1997 defined benefit pension schemes.

Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)

We recognise that the absence of indexation on pension rights accrued before April 1997 can erode the value of pensions over time and affect members who rely on these benefits in retirement.

The reforms we have introduced through the Pension Schemes Bill will enable more trustees of well funded defined benefit schemes to share surplus with sponsoring employers, and allow them to negotiate additional benefits for members, including discretionary indexation. More broadly and outside the Pension Schemes Bill, the Pensions Regulator already expects trustees to consider whether members would benefit from a discretionary increase and to take account of any history of making such awards.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of giving the NHS Staff Council a mandate to negotiate NHS partial retirement and statutory redundancy payments with trade unions.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

This specific assessment has not been made.

Partial retirement does not mean that National Health Service staff are ineligible for redundancy payments. However, taking partial retirement may change the way in which contractual redundancy payments are calculated.

The rules concerning the calculation of redundancy payments for NHS staff who have previously taken pension benefits, are determined in accordance with their contracts of employment, and statutory redundancy entitlements.

Contractual redundancy provisions for staff covered by the NHS terms and conditions of service handbook, also referred to as Agenda for Change, in England were agreed and ratified in partnership by the NHS Staff Council, the collective bargaining structure made up of trade union and employer representatives.

These provisions are set out under Section 16 of the NHS staff terms and conditions of service handbook. This section states that service used for the purposes of calculating previous pension benefits will not count for the calculation of a contractual redundancy payment. Statutory redundancy entitlements are unaffected.

The Department commissions NHS Employers to provide guidance for employers on a range of topics, including NHS redundancy arrangements and retirement options for NHS staff.