Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the suitability of NICE's process of medicines appraisal for new cell and gene therapies.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an independent body and is responsible for the methods it uses in the development of its technology appraisal and highly specialised technologies recommendations. In March 2016, NICE published a summary report of work undertaken in collaboration with the University of York on the assessment and appraisal of regenerative medicines and cell therapy products. This is available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/media/default/about/what-we-do/science%20policy%20and%20research/regenerative-medicine-study-march-2016.pdf