To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 23 January 2017 to Question 60583, on NHS: drugs, if he will publish those initial assessments.

Indication specific pricing enables multiple prices for a single medicine, dependent on the indication. Under an indication-based pricing system, companies would no longer be required to offer additional discounts on the price of a product in order to ensure that it was recommended for use in less-effective indications. It would therefore result in higher costs for the National Health Service, which may not be matched by gains in net patient outcomes. Indication specific pricing would also place a significant additional administrative burden on the NHS, particularly because of the need to track the use of medicines on an individual patient basis in a consistent way across the NHS in order to pay the correct price per dose to the pharmaceutical company. This would add to operational costs for the NHS.