Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential for (a) flexible pricing and (b) indication-specific pricing for drug purchase by the NHS.

Flexible pricing is an option for companies within the 2014 Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS). To date, no applications have been received under the flexible pricing provisions since their introduction under the 2009 PPRS.

The PPRS pricing flexibility provisions make clear that the Government is unlikely to support proposals for pricing approaches that would result in indication-specific pricing. This is because initial assessments indicate that such approaches would have significant long-term financial and operational implications for the National Health Service.