Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Department's document entitled Final impact assessment: statutory scheme to control costs of branded health service medicines, published in March 2020, whether his Department plans to update that impact assessment using data from the Life Sciences Competitiveness Indicators 2023.

The Government publishes new impact assessments each time the statutory scheme is updated. Further impact assessments were published in respect of updates made to the statutory scheme in 2022 and 2023.

The Government is currently consulting on updates to the statutory scheme to make sure that the scheme can continue to meet its objectives from 2024 onwards. A consultation stage impact assessment of the proposed updates has been published, and is available at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1179564/impact-assessment-review-scheme-cost-branded-medicines-updated-21-august-2023.pdf

An updated impact assessment will be published alongside the response to the consultation and will include the updated Competitiveness Indicators in the evidence base.