“Andrew Lansley, the Conservative ex-health secretary, who is now a peer. He has tabled a “motion of regret” in the House of Lords warning that the regulations risk undermining Nice’s independence and also appear to be incompatible with the Health and Social Care Act 2012, “which provides that a direction by the secretary of state must not relate to the substance of recommendations by Nice”.”

“The economist Eric Yang said in a recent blog: “Given worsening funding pressures from higher demand and demographic changes, the NHS can ill afford to sacrifice resources for a higher drugs bill in the short term. Spending the NHS budget has always involved making difficult trade-offs, but the UK-US drug-pricing deal means trade-offs will now be even more difficult in the future.””

“In a scathing editorial on Thursday, Kamran Abbasi, the British Medical Journal’s editor-in-chief, said the deal would mean “the UK taxpayer will end up harming vulnerable people to boost the profits of already obscenely profitable drug companies.”