Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at on 29 June 2026.
Andrew Snowden
Opposition Assistant Whip (Commons)
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of changes to NICE cost-effectiveness thresholds on access to medicines for rare cancers.
Preet Kaur Gill
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care
National Health Service patients will get improved access to life-changing treatments as a result of the changes to the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) cost-effectiveness threshold announced in the United States and United Kingdom pharmaceutical partnership.
NICE has already recommended two new medicines for rare cancers following these changes that it would otherwise have been unlikely to recommend:
Vorasidenib for treating astrocytoma or oligodendroglioma with IDH1 or IDH2 mutations after surgery in people 12 years old and over [ID6407]; and
Ripretinib for treating advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumours after three or more treatments (review of TA881) [ID6496].
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.