Funding and expenditure of the New Medicines Fund: FOI release

Information requested

1. Please can the Scottish Government supply the value of funding allocated for the New Medicines fund for calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 or if the data is held by financial year, financial years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23.

2. Please can the Scottish Government supply the value of expenditure on the New Medicines fund for calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, or if the data is held by financial year, financial years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23.

3. Does the Scottish Government use Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access (VPAS) monies to fund the New Medicines Fund?If so, please can the Scottish government supply (in absolute terms and as a % of total VPAS monies received by the Scottish Government) for calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 or if the data is held by financial year, financial years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23.

Response

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested.

The answers to your questions are:

1. New Medicines Funding allocation:

2019-20	2020-21*	2021-22	2022-23
£80.0m	£80.0m	£50.0m	unavailable

We are still within the 2022-23 financial year, so I am unable to provide a figure for 2022-23.

* In 2020-21, the Scottish Government provided an additional £30 million through the New Medicines Fund (NMF) during the pandemic.
The calculated payment percentage is published for each calendar year. For the years in question (2020-21), there was a fall in the calculated payment percentage in 2020 (5.9%) compared to 2019 (9.6%). This was the result of, amongst other calculation elements, the year-to-date sales growth rate to September 2019. At the start of financial year 2020-21, NHS Boards were advised to plan for a share of £80m from the NMF based on forecasts from the UK Department of Health and Social Care. During the course of 2020-21, the forecast was revised downwards on the basis of payments against allowable sales. The Scottish Government provided additional funding to ensure NHS Boards received the £80m they had anticipated. Final receipts from the DHSC in 2020-21 were £50m.

2. New Medicines Funding issued to Health Boards:

2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23
£80.0m	£80.0m	£50.0m	unavailable

We are still within the 2022-23 financial year, so I am unable to provide a figure for 2022-23.

3. VPAS receipts are used to fund the New Medicines Fund (NMF). We do not hold the information requested in the second part of the question, however the Scottish Government remains committed to fully investing VPAS income into the NMF over the four-year lifetime of the VPAS agreement. It is worth noting that, due to the timing delay in the confirmation of the value of VPAS receipts, the value of the NMF allocation will not match VPAS receipts in a given year. Because VPAS is based on actual sales data, projections are used throughout the financial year to estimate the total money to be allocated to the NMF. At the end of the four-year VPAS agreement, the total value of NMF allocations will be reconciled to total VPAS receipts to ensure the commitment to fully invest the rebate in new medicines has been met.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have some of the information are explained above.

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