Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure access to affordable medicines on the NHS.

We recognise that the pharmaceutical sector, and the innovative medicines it produces, is critical to our National Health Service, our economy, and the Plan for Change. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence will continue to support the adoption of new medicines in a way that provides the most health benefit for society and which represents value to the taxpayer through the development of authoritative, evidence-based guidance for the NHS on whether new licensed medicines should be routinely funded by the NHS.

The voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access, and growth continues to help improve access to cutting-edge treatments for NHS patients while keeping the medicines bill sustainable for taxpayers. Meanwhile, through our Life Sciences Sector Plan, we have committed to the United Kingdom becoming one of the top three fastest places in Europe for patient access to medicines by 2030. To support this, we will work with industry to accelerate growth in spending on innovative medicines compared to the previous decade.

We have also committed to becoming a leader in the uptake of off-patent medicines, with an opportunity to save £1 billion over five years by driving early and widespread uptake of new biosimilar drugs.