The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7219 p516
12 October 2002

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Government rejects calls for major changes to the NICE appeals system

Calls from the House of Commons Health Select Committee and the pharmaceutical industry for changes to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence's appeals procedure have been largely rejected by the Government.

The one concession that has been made is that the NICE chairman, currently Sir Michael Rawlins, will no longer decide whether appeals against NICE decisions should be heard as well as chair the appeal committee.

The Government's response to a recent health committee report on the institute (PJ, 13 July, p44), rejects the suggestion that the NICE chairman should be disqualified from chairing, or even sitting on, an appeals committee but accepts that the chairman and any non-executive board members should continue to be barred from chairing appeals where they been involved in the pre-appeal process.

The Government response says: "To set up an appeals procedure which is completely separate from NICE carries the risk of substituting one set of experts for another, thereby undermining the NICE process."

Also rejected is a call for greater transparency. The Government says that confidential information should be kept to a minimum but argues that companies supply market-sensitive information, and academics present information that could prejudice future peer-reviewed publication of their work if it were made public by NICE. The health committee wanted all information presented to NICE to be made public.