The medicines industry is giving the NHS a cash advance to help towards meeting the 2016 drugs bill in the hope of encouraging better access to new medicines. It should mean an extra £20 million for patients in Scotland.

Under the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS), pharmaceutical companies in the UK pay back a proportion of the cost of new medicines used in the NHS back to the UK government every year.

The industry trade body and negotiator, ABPI, reveals today that it has paid the UK Treasury £619 million in 2015 under the schemeⁱ and will be restructuring its payments to bring forward to next year a further £200 million of payments originally meant to be made in 2017 and 2018.

Scotland can expect to be allocated roughly 10 pence in every pound of this.

The Scottish Government chooses to put this money into its New Medicines Fund to pay for “treatments for people with rare or end-of-life conditions”ⁱⁱ . In May, Health Secretary Shona Robison MSP doubled the fund for 2015-16 from £40 million to £80 million.

Ministers say that, since 2013, over 1000 Scottish patients have started treatment funded by the New Medicines Fund and its predecessor Rare Conditions Medicines Fund. They say over 800 patients benefitted from the fund in 2014-15. The most recent information given to Parliamentⁱⁱⁱ suggested that a little more than half of the £40 million allocated for that year (£21.5 million) was spent.

A more up to date figure for the number of patients that have benefited from the Fund is due to be the subject of another Written Answer in the New Year.

The negotiators of the PPRS have always seen the Scheme as being about supporting the acceptance and use of new and innovative medicines, by cushioning the impact of their use on NHS budgets.

The Scottish Government would argue that its choice to restrict this only to medicines for rare and life limiting conditions, while not a distinction made in the PPRS, is in the spirit of the agreement, which was, after all, made in London without them at the table.

Commentary on whether Scottish ministers, in addressing unmet need in rare and end of life conditions, have unwittingly created a two tier system is for another blog.

The real challenge remains for the industry and patient groups to persuade NHSScotland that by paying for rare and end of life conditions, the New Medicines Fund takes the pressure of the rest of the local NHS medicines bill, and creates an opportunity to ease some of the restrictions on access to new medicines for everything else.

ⁱScottish Government News Release

ⁱⁱ Parliamentary Answer

ⁱⁱⁱParliamentary Answer