Greg Mulholland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2015-12-17.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the cost is to the public purse of Deloittes’ consultancy services on helping to develop commissioning policies for drugs to treat ultra-rare diseases.
George Freeman
There is no contract with Deloittes’ consultancy services for developing policies for drugs to treat ultra-rare diseases.
However, as part of NHS England’s wider responsibilities to directly commission specialised services, NHS England has a significant clinical commissioning policy work programme which enables the development and publication of fair and equitable eligibility criteria for specialised treatments for patients across England, based on a review of the latest evidence of clinical and cost effectiveness.
In order to provide support to this programme, NHS England awarded a contract to Deloitte in September 2015 to provide support to the lead clinicians and patients undertaking this work. The level of support, analysis and review work varies, but the cost of developing a policy from start to finish, using the support of the Deloitte contract, is around £33,000.
Deloitte will not be making any decisions on NHS England’s commissioning policies, accessing any patient or commercially sensitive data or accessing any privileged information about specific drugs or treatments. Furthermore, all policies, whether developed solely with support from NHS England staff, or with project support from Deloitte, will be subject to the same assurance and scrutiny requirements and will considered for adoption in the same way by NHS England.
