Speeches

Bob Ainsworth – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people received funding through the Cancer Drugs Fund in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England in each of the last five years.

Norman Lamb

Prior to April 2013, information on the Cancer Drugs Fund was administered through clinical panels based in each strategic health authority (SHA) and data on the number of patients who received funding in each constituency and city was not collected. Information on the number of patients funded in West Midlands SHA and England in 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 is shown as follows:

Number of patients funded in 2010-11

Number of patients funded in 2011-12

Number of patients funded in 2012-13

Total number of patients funded since Oct 20101

West Midlands SHA

292

1,658

1,534

3,484

England

2,780

11,798

15,456

30,034

1 Some individual patients may be double-counted where a patient has received more than one drug treatment through the Cancer Drugs Fund

Source: Information provided to the Department by SHAs

NHS England has had oversight of the Fund since April 2013 and publishes information on patient numbers routinely on its website at:

www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/pe/cdf/

In 2013-14, 5,695 patients in the Midlands and East region and 19,282 patients in England received funding through the Fund. In addition, 28 individual cancer drugs fund request applications were approved by the Cancer Drugs Fund panel in the Midlands and East region with 278 applications approved nationally.