Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to ensure that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the Scottish Medicines Consortium collaborate effectively on drug approvals for metastatic breast cancer treatment.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is committed to publishing draft recommendations on all newly licensed treatments around the time of licensing in England and works closely with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to ensure that licensing procedures and health technology assessments are as streamlined as possible.

Both NICE and the Scottish Medicines Consortium are permanent partners in the Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway which supports more rapid review and approval of promising new cancer treatments.

NICE is an England-only body. Health is a devolved matter and as such decisions on access to drugs in Scotland is a matter for the devolved Government.