Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, on what dates since 2 July 2014 he has discussed with charities the use of off-patent drugs for new indications; and what the content of these discussions was.

Off-patent drugs are those whose patent period has expired and they are widely used in the National Health Service now. Drugs can also be prescribed ‘off-label’ outside of their licensed indication(s) to individual patients where doctors consider it is clinically appropriate to do so. Prescribing decisions are rightly a matter for clinicians in discussion with their patients.

My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State has had no discussions with charities about the use of off-patent drugs for new indications since 2 July. Officials have had several discussions with the Breast Cancer Campaign covering their views on medicines licences, implementation of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines and planning the roundtable discussion on adoption of new evidence into clinical practice. There have also been ongoing discussions with Cancer Research UK on the use of aspirin to help prevent certain cancers.