Our policy on cancer drugs

Cancer drugs play a crucial role in many patients’ treatment, offering promising improvements in survival and quality of life. There have been exciting advances in drug development over recent years, however translating these into routine access for patients in the NHS has sometimes difficult.

Ensuring people with cancer have swift access to the most innovative treatments is critical if we are to see outcomes improve. Our research has led to the development of more than 50 cancer drugs, which are being used to treat 3 in 4 people who receive cancer drugs on the NHS.

The landscape of cancer drug development has changed markedly over recent years, including an increased focus on targeted or ‘personalised’ treatments. While exciting, these new developments pose challenges to the standard processes for approving new cancer drugs.

 Since Brexit, the UK's process for drug licensing has been managed by the UK Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). New decisions taken for drugs as part of the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) centralised procedure will continue to apply in Northern Ireland. 

Our priority as the UK continues to develop its new relationship with the EU is to safeguard the interests of people affected by cancer and the research community. Once new treatments have gone through approval processes, they must be accessible to patients as soon as possible. New UK regulations around clinical trials and medicines access must be compatible enough with international standards to ensure the UK remains a desirable place for research collaboration, and for the pharmaceutical industry to launch new treatments. It is vital that the UK doesn't fall behind. We want to see quicker access to suitable medicines, and support innovative thinking to make that happen for people with cancer. For more information, please see our blog here.

We are supportive of the current work of the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) in England, a managed access fund that provides earlier access to drugs while allowing more evidence to be collected on their clinical effectiveness. We are also supportive of the expansion of the CDF into an 'Innovative Medicines Fund' (IMF) and the overarching aim to improve patient access to medicines. However, it is important that Government, NHS England and NICE ensure the access landscape remains joined up in light of introducing new initiatives, to avoid fragmentation and overlap. There have been suggestions to merge the CDF and IMF in the long term, and while there is currently no confirmation of this, CRUK has responded to such proposals to highlight the effect on medicines for cancer indications.

For patients in Wales, all managed access drugs are now covered by the New Treatment Fund. In Scotland, decisions on which drugs should receive NHS funding are made by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) rather than NICE, meaning drugs in the CDF are considered under the SMC’s normal procedures. The Northern Ireland Department of Health announced in September 2018 that it would begin paying for managed access drugs.

In the longer term, we would like to see real-world evidence used to inform pricing decisions, through flexible pricing mechanisms such as outcomes-based pricing. High-quality, routinely-collected data will be central to the success of these initiatives.

We continue to work with decision-makers and health bodies across the UK to ensure patient access to new medicines stays top of the policy agenda.

Response to DHSC consultation on the future strategy for batch testing of medicinal products (July 2022)

Response to NHS England Commercial Framework consultation (January 2020)

Submission to the Scottish Health and Sport Committee medicines inquiry (November 2019)

Summary of CRUK-Greater Manchester outcome-based payment research (Phase 2) (March 2019)

Making Outcome-Based Payment a Reality in the NHS: Full Report (February 2019)

Making Outcome-Based Payment a Reality in the NHS: Executive Summary (February 2019)

Policy statement: improving access to cancer medicines in England, October 2018

Policy statement: access to molecular diagnostic tests and targeted medicines in England (September 2018)

Summary report of findings from CRUK-CASMI fellowship: Health Technology Appraisal and access to cancer drugs in the UK (June 2018)

Letter to Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark from the Access to Cancer Medicines Coalition, March 2018

Response to NICE consultation on updated Technology Appraisal Process Guide, February 2018

Drug licensing following the UK’s exit from the EU (December 2017)

Response to NICE consultation on proposals for increasing capacity within the technology appraisal programme (November 2017)

Response to the NICE Proposals for changes to the arrangements for evaluating and funding drugs and other health technologies (March 2017)

NHS England and NICE CRUK consultation response (January 2017)

Response to NHS England and NICE consultation on Cancer Drugs Fund reform (February 2016)

Access to chemopreventative drugs (January 2016)

Response to the NHS England consultation on revisions to the Standard Operating Procedures for the Cancer Drugs Fund (October 2014)

Response to NICE review of the methods for Technology Appraisal (June 2014)

Response to NICE review of the guide to the processes of Technology Appraisal (March 2014)

Consultation on revisions to the statutory scheme for medicines pricing (July 2013)

Cancer patients’ views on government plans to introduce value-based pricing for medicines (August 2011)

Cancer Drugs Fund: a consultation (January 2011)