Breast Cancer Drugs — House of Commons, 2017-01-26
Topic: Health
Martyn Day (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for that point and I join her in hoping for a positive outcome. We expect a decision to be made in March with an announcement on 10 April The SNP Scottish Government have substantially increased access to new medicines, particularly for cancer, with plenty of reforms and investment in recent years. The Scottish Government will build on recent reforms and make further improvements, in collaboration with patients and NHS staff, by accepting the recommendations of Dr Brian Montgomery’s review. Shona Robison, Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport, has announced that the Scottish Government will take forward all 28 of the review’s recommendations. Dr Montgomery was tasked to examine how changes made to the Scottish Medicines Consortium process in 2014 affected access to medicines for rare and end-of-life conditions. His recommendations set out how the process for appraising medicines could be made more open, transparent and robust Among the Montgomery recommendations—the House need not worry; I will not list all 28 of them—is to give the SMC an additional decision option of an interim recommendation for use subject to ongoing evaluation, which will allow collection of more data on a medicine’s real-world effectiveness. Another is the introduction of managed access agreements, under which medicine would be provided at a discounted price for a period of time, again to collect real-world data on its effectiveness. Another recommendation is to make greater use of national procurement in NHS National Services Scotland— NSS—to lead negotiations on cost with the pharma industry to get the fairest price possible. Better capturing of patient outcome data in the real world is vital to enable us to determine whether medicines are bringing the expected level of benefits to patients Beyond the recommendations of the review, Ms Robison has also announced improvements to the processes for non-routine access to medicines on an individual case-by-case basis. The peer approved clinical system or PACS, piloted in Glasgow in 2015 to handle applications for ultra-orphan medicines, has been successfully rolled out across Scotland. A second tier of PACS will now be introduced to replace and build upon the existing individual patient treatment request system. A new national appeals process will be introduced through the new tier of PACS, and that will include consideration of equity of access with other parts of the UK as a material part of its decision-making process In November Gregor McNie, Cancer Research UK’s senior public affairs manager in Scotland, said: "SMC does a difficult but necessary job to assess whether new cancer drugs should be made available on the NHS. Following the SMC reforms, we’ve been pleased to see a significant increase in the availability of cancer drugs in Scotland and we support the review’s recommendations to make further progress." Breast Cancer NOW has said that "Scottish Government reforms give fresh hope for a medicines system that will put patients and their families first." It also said: "Scotland’s approach to reform is a useful example to the rest of the UK about ways in which the system can be improved."