Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had with clinicians about how to improve the uptake of clinically and cost-effective off-patent drugs outside their licensed indications.

We have had no detailed discussions but we are holding a roundtable stakeholder event in the new year where we will discuss a number of issues raised by the Off-Patent Drugs Bill. Individual prescribing decisions on the most appropriate treatments are a matter for clinicians, in discussion with their patients.