Meeting records about the paediatric oncology funding exception rule (8.1b)

Thank you for your request dated 2 November 2022 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to the Pharmaceutical Schedule funding exception rule (8.1b) for paediatric oncology. You asked:

…whether the topic of funding of paediatric cancer medicines (rule 8.1b) consulted on today has been discussed as an agenda item or matters arising at PTAC, CAC or Cancer Treatments Advisory Committee (previously CaTSoP). If so, can you please provide the record of that/those discussions/advice.

We have understood your request to relate to more recent committee meetings (ie since 2021) rather than historic committee meetings. I am pleased to provide you with a response to your request within this letter. I acknowledge this response was due to you yesterday, 30 November 2022, and apologise for the delay.

Pharmac provided briefings to the Cancer Treatments Advisory Committee (CTAC) (formerly CaTSoP), the Pharmacology and Therapeutics Advisory Committee (PTAC), and the Consumer Advisory Committee (CAC) before releasing the consultation on funding medicines for paediatric cancers(external link). Copies of the briefings provided to CTAC and PTAC are publicly available within our OIA response of 22 December 2021(external link). See the following pages of the document published with our OIA response for the relevant briefings:

• CTAC (7 May 2021), page 11.
• PTAC (20 July 2021), page 43.

Additionally, a copy of the PTAC meeting record of August 2021 (following the briefing of July 2021) and the CAC discussion paper (memo) and meeting record of April 2022 are also attached with this response. Please note, we have redacted a small amount of information from the document provided where it is not related to the paediatric oncology topic.

We have not yet made a decision about releasing the CTAC meeting record related to the briefing of May 2021, and some CAC documents from August 2022 we have found related to your request. This is because we need more time to finish consultations (section 15A of the OIA) before we can make a decision about releasing these documents. Therefore, we have extended the due date for communicating a complete decision for your request to Friday 16 December 2022.

You have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman about our response to your OIA, under section 28(3) of the OIA. Details of how to make a complaint(external link) are on the Ombudsman’s website.

We are making our information more freely available, so we now publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.

We will be in touch again soon with a final response for your request.