Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when the drug pembrolizumab will be available on the NHS for treatment of skin cancer.

The manufacturer of pembrolizumab, Merck, has not yet filed an application for a marketing authorisation for use in the European Union.

Hospital doctors can arrange for the supply of any drug or other substance, even one not normally available on National Health Service prescription, provided the patient's commissioner agrees to supply it at NHS expense. The doctor would, in those circumstances, have to retain clinical responsibility for the patient while prescribing the drug in question.