Agencies such as NICE are asked to exercise special care in making announcements during the period of campaigning immediately before national and local elections.
The elections for the European Parliament, local councils in England and for
the London Mayor will take place on 10 June. The Institute's Board met yesterday
and agreed to adopt the same policy put in place last year for the elections
to the Welsh Assembly, which was that neither final guidance nor the outcome
of any appeals should be published in the run up to the election. As a result
of this, we will not be issuing guidance in May. The clinical guideline on familial
breast cancer, the cancer service guidance on colorectal cancer and the scheduled
topics in the interventional procedures programme will all now be published
on 23 June.
