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NHS Patients (Access to Medicines)

The drugs that come through the NICE process will be available, thanks to the NHS constitution which will make it absolutely clear that patients have a right to access the drugs. There will be more of those drugs coming through. The PCT exceptional circumstances committees will have a far more transparent way of considering drugs that have not come to NICE for appraisal, have been refused by NICE or are off-label, so there will be a better system. I would previously have shared my hon. Friend's fear that there is no way of ending the previous co-payment advice without jeopardising the basic principles of the NHS, but I think that Mike Richards has found a way of doing that. Even when drugs come through the new system which are not available on the NHS—and there will be fewer of them—we will no longer withdraw treatment, but will ensure that it is administered privately.