Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much remains in the budget of the Cancer Drugs Fund; and how the monies available to that Fund have been allocated.

The 2016-17 budget for the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) is fixed at £340 million. NHS England has advised that, in order to ensure the Fund does not exceed this budget, a new expenditure control mechanism has been put in place as part of the wider reforms to the Fund which went live on 29 July 2016.

The updated standard operating procedure for the new CDF as set out in ‘Appraisal and Funding of Cancer Drugs Fund from July 2016 (including the new Cancer Drugs Fund)’ explained that the following is chargeable against the Fund in 2016-17:

- Drug indications in receipt of interim funding;

- CDF managed access agreements;

- Off-label drug indications approved for funding from the Fund;

- The administrative cost of the CDF (capped at 2% of the fixed £340 million budget in 2016-17);

- Individual funding requests approved for cancer drugs up to 31 July 2016;

- Existing CDF drug/indications awaiting reconsideration or appraisal by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE);

- Drug indications removed from the CDF due to previous reprioritisation exercises or due to NICE/NHS England decisions in so far as they relate to patients who commenced treatment prior to their removal and who remain on treatment; and

- The cost of the previous CDF for the period from 1 April 2016 to 28 July 2016 when the new arrangements for the Fund were introduced.

NHS England has committed to publishing a non-binding forecast for the 2016-17 outturn position in December 2016 and quarterly updates from 2017-18.