Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of joint working between the (a) Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, (b) the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, (c) NHS England and (d) NHS Improvement in the context of supporting access for patients to products licenced through Project Orbis.

We routinely work with system partners to assess the effectiveness of processes to support access to new medicines for National Health Service patients. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and NHS England ensure there is an integrated approach to enable access to new medicines, including those licensed through Project Orbis. NICE commits to publishing draft recommendations on new medicines approximately at the time of licensing, with final guidance within three months of licensing wherever possible. NHS England and NICE have also agreed principles to allow potential interim access ahead of NICE’s guidance where timely guidance is not possible, which has supported early access for a number of medicines licensed through Project Orbis.