Speeches

Roger Godsiff – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Roger Godsiff on 2016-06-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure the NHS is not charged a premium price by pharmaceutical companies for general prescription drugs.

Alistair Burt

In the main, the National Health Service obtains value for money from the purchasing of medicines through the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme and the statutory scheme for branded medicines and through competition in the generic medicines market.

Where we suspect that price rises are excessive, we can, and do, alert the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and ask it to investigate.

My Rt. hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health, has asked the CMA to urgently look at the issues raised in the media recently as part of its continuing investigations into excessive drugs pricing.