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Surrey Primary Care Trust

Volume 479: debated on Monday 21 July 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what the membership of Surrey primary care trust’s exceptional cases panel is; (219218)

(2) what criteria are used by Surrey primary care trust’s exceptional cases panel to assess requests for exceptional funding;

(3) whether the exceptional cases panel of Surrey primary care trust accepts requests for funding exceptional cases from (a) patients and (b) clinicians.

The information requested is not collected centrally. It is for primary care trusts (PCTs) to commission services on behalf of their populations and to make decisions locally on which treatments to fund, taking into account all relevant circumstances. The hon. Member may therefore wish to raise these issues with the chief executive of Surrey PCT.

The draft national health service constitution (copies of which have already been placed in the Library) makes clear the patient’s right to expect local decisions on funding for drugs for which National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidance is not available to be made rationally following proper consideration of the evidence. To underpin this, the Government will require PCTs to put in place clear and transparent arrangements both for local decision-making on funding of new drugs and for considering exceptional funding requests, and to publish information on those arrangements. Where the local NHS decides not to fund a treatment, the patient and clinician can expect an explanation.