Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether NHS England has undertaken procurement exercises in relation to hepatitis C medicines which have enabled those medicines to be obtained at a lower cost than the cost used for the purposes of appraisal by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

The Department’s Commercial Medicines Unit (DHCMU), rather than NHS England, is responsible for medicines procurement in secondary care.

DHCMU manages, on behalf of the National Health Service in secondary care, a tender process which establishes price framework agreements for hepatitis C medicines. This programme commenced in August 2015 and has resulted in ongoing price reductions. The six-monthly rolling regional tender programme undertaken on behalf of NHS trusts in England has continued to exert a downward pressure on the prices paid (costs) for the new oral hepatitis C medicines.

The evaluation of hepatitis C products by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is completely separate to the DHCMU tender process. In developing its guidance on several hepatitis C drugs, NICE took into account prices that had been agreed by the DHCMU at the time its guidance was being developed, as the companies provided this information as part their evidence submissions to NICE.

In common with other medicines, where new competing products become available, procurements managed by the DHCMU may secure reduced prices in the years following NICE’s decisions. As with other medicines, NHS England has taken account of the prices DHCMU procurements achieve for hepatitis C medicines to inform the additional investment required in meeting its commitments to roll out the new treatments.