Health Minister Dr Shane Reti is changing his tune on his Government’s failure to honour its promise to deliver 13 new cancer drugs, admitting it should have been communicated better.

He also accepts that the process National followed in developing the policy ahead of the 2023 election wasn’t sufficient and didn’t adequately consider implementation challenges.

Reti maintains that the Government will deliver the policy exactly how it was presented during the campaign, but could only commit to implementing it within the year.

It comes amid a strong backlash from cancer patients and advocacy groups following the policy being absent from this year’s Budget, even though National had promised the first tranche of funding would start in the 2024/25 financial year.

The Government has since worked to address the widespread public criticism with Finance Minister Nicola Willis confirming the policy would be honoured “soon”.

In the hours after the Budget, Reti claimed nothing about the policy had changed, given its $280 million price tag over four years was to be funded by reinstating the $5 prescription co-payment, which hadn’t started.

However, now facing Parliament’s health select committee, Reti admitted the Government’s communication should have been better.

“I take responsibility for the communication, we should have done a better job with that and given patients some sense of direction and sense of hope and timeframe,” Reti told journalists after his select committee appearance.

“We didn’t express the hurdles that we had and what the timeframe might be, that’s clearly what we should have done.”

He claimed the policy wasn’t fully developed ahead of the election, arguing it wasn’t until he had access to the “tools of Government” that he became aware of the complications in implementing the policy.

“The policy changes that we’d make, if there were any, was to have a deeper and earlier understanding of the implementation.

“That’s what’s taken some time to really bolt that down, we didn’t have all those tools in Opposition.”

National’s policy to fund 13 specific cancer drugs not currently available in New Zealand was sourced from a 2022 Cancer Control Agency report. Some experts and advocates, including those in that report, have questioned whether other or more modern drugs would be more effective.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Health Minister Dr Shane Reti campaigned on the policy ahead of the 2023 election. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Reti said there would be no change to the drugs listed in the party’s policy, even if different drugs were shown to help more people or be more effective.

“We had made a commitment to these people and they saw themselves in this policy and so we’re going to deliver that policy.”

He admitted some of the 13 treatments had been unsuccessfully considered through New Zealand’s drug-buying process - through Pharmac - in the past. The Herald has requested further information from Reti’s office on this.

Reti denied the Government was promoting drugs that had failed to progress through Pharmac previously.

“The announcement that we’ll make shortly will describe exactly how we’re going to deliver this policy.”

He wouldn’t outline when he would explain the Government’s plans for the policy, except to say it would happen “very soon” and that it would be implemented by the end of the year.

Labour’s health spokeswoman Dr Ayesha Verrall said the Government had been “cruel and manipulative” in how it had managed the policy.

“What we heard today was a lot of excuses, which actually all came back to things that were apparent before the election, so it seems to me they had no intention of following through, and then got shocked by backlash.”

Verrall, a former health minister, believed Reti was “saving his skin politically” by sticking with the policy’s 13 drugs instead of “doing what’s right for patients and getting modern medicines”.

Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.