Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the contribution of 7 November 2014 by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health, Official Report, column 116, what the evidential basis is for the statement that the restraining factor is the lack of information for clinicians about off-label use.

We know that new research evidence is being made available in healthcare all the time and that translating this into practice poses a number of challenges. We need to support clinicians in incorporating the most up to date and robust evidence into patient care and are in the process of setting up a round-table discussion with key stakeholders to look at how we can do that better in the case of off-label use of out-of-patent drugs.