Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to commission an independent review of how severity is defined in NICE appraisals and its effect on access to new cancer drugs.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is responsible for the methods and processes that it uses in the development of its recommendations. The severity modifier was introduced in January 2022 as part of a number of changes intended to make NICE’s methods fairer, faster, and more consistent.

NICE carried out a review of the implementation of the severity modifier in September 2024 and found that it is operating as intended. This showed that the proportion of positive cancer recommendations is higher, at 84.8%, than with the end-of-life modifier it replaced, at 75%, and the proportion of positive recommendations for advanced cancer treatments is also higher, 81.1% compared to 69%.

NICE has commissioned research to gather further evidence on societal preferences that will inform future method reviews.