Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of whether the conditions it attaches to National Institute for Health Research and National Health Service research grants safeguard affordable access for NHS patients to drugs and treatments that result from that research.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) provides support for the development of new drugs and treatments, primarily through its investment in early translational research infrastructure in the National Health Service and through a range of research funding programmes.

NIHR-supported research generates high quality evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of medicines for the NHS and public health services, including informing the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance. There is no explicit link between the terms of NIHR research grants and the price the NHS pays for medicines.

NICE assesses important new medicines through a robust evaluation process, which ensures they are priced in a manner that is cost-effective for the value they provide to patients and to the NHS. The costs and source of financial support in developing medicines is not a relevant part of this assessment, and there are no plans to include this.