Off his brief

On Thursday The Right Honorable David Willetts MP, Minister of State for Universities and Science, came to speak to the British Science Festival. His main job was to speak at the dinner, but he also gave the press 30 minutes. Unfortunately I wasn’t there. But I heard what happened.

Apparently the minister was saying some things about how important it was to base policy and decisions on scientific evidence. So someone asked him why the NHS funds homeopathy when there’s little evidence supporting it. His response was that patients want homeopathy so the government pays for it. To which a journalist asked why people with cancer weren’t allowed expensive drugs, with evidence in favour of them, when they wanted them but NICE hadn’t approved them. The minister responded that NICE had an advisory role only and that GPs should be free to make decisions in the best interests of their patients.

This is how it was reported to me by some people who were there.

As it stands, NICE does not just have ‘an advisory role’. It does offer advice in some areas, but it also has a regulatory role. In particular, if NICE approves a drug for use then NHS organisations are obliged to pay for the drug should a patient and their doctor request it. If NICE hasn’t approved a drug, PCTs are left to make their own decisions: "The NHS is legally obliged to fund and resource medicines and treatments recommended by NICE's technology appraisals."

To say that NICE has only an advisory role is either a) wrong, or b) an indication of a change in policy. Given that Mr Willetts is a government minister, either possibility seems likely.

Apparently there was general hubbub after this incident. The science journalists thought it might be important, but they didn’t really know. Mr Willetts’ press officer came around to speak to each journalist in person to check whether they were going to write the story and pleading with them not to as the minister was speaking off his brief.

Most people didn’t write the story.

When I heard about this later, I was a bit aghast. I thought that either Mr Willetts being wrong about an important piece of government policy, or announcing a change in policy (perhaps prematurely) were both good stories. I couldn’t believe that they had let him off.

In the pub that evening, the man from the Irish Times suggested a number of things that might have happened. If the science journos just missed the real point, they might not have conveyed it properly to their news desks and so might have been told just to leave it. Or, because it was so late in the day (1630) the journos might just have felt a bit lazy, knowing that if they played up the story they would have been asked to follow it up with David Willets’ department as well as the Department of Health. All of which might have been a bit of a pain to do so near to home time.

And this is how news is made.

I wasn't going to tell you this.  It feels like a bit of gossip too far.  But it turns out that the only paper that did run the story was The Times.  Although, they too got it a bit wrong: