Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has had recent discussions with (a) National Institute for Health and Care (NICE), (b) NHS England and (c) other system partners on the potential merits of lowering the discount rate applied to technologies with health gains evaluated by NICE.

Department officials regularly discuss a range of issues with colleagues in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and NHS England, including related to aspects of NICE’s methods for health technology evaluation.