Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to make new migraine treatments available through the NHS.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body that makes recommendations for the National Health Service on whether selected new medicines, including for the treatment of migraine, represent an effective use of NHS resources. NHS commissioners are legally required to fund treatments recommended by NICE to ensure that they can be made routinely available to NHS patients. Wherever possible, NICE aims to publish recommendations on new medicines within a few months of licensing.

NICE published technology appraisal guidance that recommends botulinum toxin type A for the prevention of headaches in adults with chronic migraine in 2012. NICE is also currently appraising the medicines erenumab and fremanezumab for the treatment of migraine and has not yet published final guidance. NICE expects to publish final guidance on erenumab later this month and final guidance on fremanezumab in January 2020.