Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what funding his Department has provided to enable access to chemoprevention drugs in the last 12 months.

It is for commissioners to make decisions on the availability of chemoprevention drugs for their local populations, on the basis of the available evidence, including guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

National Health Service funding has risen in each year of this Parliament and is £12.7 billion higher in cash terms in 2014-15 than in 2010-11. Health funding will again grow in real terms in 2015-16, which means an additional £2.1 billion.

NHS England has responsibility for clinical commissioning group (CCG) allocations and, as a result of the Government protecting the overall health budget for NHS England, NHS England has in turn ensured that all CCGs are receiving a funding increase at least matching inflation, as predicted at the time of the announcement, in 2014-15 and 2015-16.

The funding that CCGs receive is not ring-fenced and it is for CCGs at a local level to decide how to allocate their funding.

NICE issued an updated clinical guideline on familial breast cancer in June 2013 which includes recommendations on the use of tamoxifen and raloxifene outside their licensed indications for the prevention of cancer in specific groups of women at high and moderate risk of breast cancer. NICE’s clinical guidelines represent best practice and we expect commissioners to take their recommendations into account when designing services and making commissioning decisions for their local population.