Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what timeline is for NHS England to complete commercial negotiations with pharmaceutical companies after a treatment has met the NICE budget impact test; and what steps he is taking to ensure that those treatments are available to patients in a timely manner.

The timescales for the commercial negotiations for products that trigger the budget impact test are set out in the ‘Procedure for varying the funding requirement to take account of net budget impact’ which is published at:

https://www.nice.org.uk/Media/Default/About/what-we-do/NICE-guidance/NICE-technology-appraisals/TA-HST-procedure-varying-the-funding-direction.pdf

The process has been designed to ensure that, wherever possible, the commercial negotiation takes place in parallel with the technology appraisal and does not affect patient access.