Allocations to Scotland from Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access (VPAS): FOI release

Information requested

1. Please can the Scottish Government supply the value of Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access (VPAS) monies received for calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, or if the data is held by financial year, financial years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23.

2. How much of the VPAS monies received by the Scottish Government in 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 has been allocated to medicines (in absolute and as a % of total VPAS monies received by the Scottish Government)?

3. Does the Scottish Government treat VPAS monies allocated to the NHS in Scotland as recurrent or non-recurrent?

Response

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

The answers to your questions are:

1. VPAS receipts:

2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23
£69.9m	£50.1m	£74.4m	unavailable

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

2. VPAS receipts are used to fund the New Medicines Fund (NMF). The Scottish Government remains committed to fully investing the rebate from the VPAS agreement 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.

3. VPAS funding is provided to the Scottish Government by the UK Department of Health and Social Care on a non-recurring basis. The current VPAS agreement covers calendar years 2019-2023 and - within those four years - the level of funding will fluctuate as it is based on actual sales data. Furthermore, each four-year agreement has its own terms which leads to variation between four-year agreements. Given this uncertainty, it is appropriate to treat VPAS funding as non-recurring.

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 reason why we don't have some of the information is explained above.

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