Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, for what reasons the publication of final decisions on commissioning policies under NHS England's annual prioritisation process for determining investment in specialised services have been delayed.

NHS England set out its investment decisions for specialised services in July:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/07/spec-services-investment/

making it clear that some of these decisions were provisional and subject to the outcome of a judicial review on Pre-exposure Prophylaxis for HIV.

NHS England also gave further updates in August and November to ensure stakeholders were kept informed of progress and next steps.

Following the outcome of its appeal NHS England is now rerunning the prioritisation process and expects to announce the results in the near future.

Clinicians, on behalf of their patients, can continue to apply for funding for treatments and interventions being considered as part of the annual prioritisation round where there is clinically exceptional or clinically critical need. Further information on the decision making processes can be found here:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/key-docs/