New Health Minister David Clark has reaffirmed the Government's plans for an interim drugs fund.

A 'big pharma' lobby group has sunk more than $150,000 into a mysterious scheme called "Election 2017 Project".

Financial statements for the pharmaceutical lobby group Medicines NZ show it spent $151,106 on the project, the firm's second largest expense of 2016.

The group has refused to reveal what the cash was spent on, and there are no references to a project of that name on the Medicines NZ website.

DYLAN MARTINEZ/REUTERS Under Labour's new drug policy, a fund will allow extremely expensive drugs to be funded for a period of two years, where there wasn't sufficient data to consider permanent funding.

Prior to the election, Medicines NZ strongly supported a Labour Party policy to adopt an interim drugs fund.

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​Under the policy, an interim drugs fund would allow extremely expensive but new-age drugs to be funded for a period of two years, where there wasn't sufficient data to consider permanent funding.

SUPPLIED General manager of Pharma lobby group Medicines NZ Graeme Jarvis refused to say what the $151,000 was spent on.

Health Minister David Clark said it remained Labour policy, and that he was "convinced" it was the right thing to do.

Medicines NZ managing director Dr Graeme Jarvis would not respond to requests for comment.

And there are no records that show Medicines NZ donated money to any political party.

The group's 2017 goals include getting patients wider access to new medicines through the public health system, and to have new medicines recognised as "a cost-effective solution".

It also wanted the Government to invest $40 per person, per year, to clear and fund the medicines waiting list. It's also lobbied to boost publicly funded medicines from 5.3 per cent to 7 per cent of the health budget by 2020.

These goals could be partially achieved by the Government's cancer drug fund. The fund was not in Labour's 100-day plan however, and no costing work had been carried out.

Clark said he would be looking at the data from overseas examples.

"We've said we want to explore an early access fund and yes, we want to have a look at what's possible in that area. There would have to be a burden of evidence that that was a bad idea for me to not want to pursue it," he said.

He would be having "robust discussions" with those in the drug purchasing space.

"Also with those who are pushing for the policy – the cancer agencies have been very vocal in saying why this should be a good idea. And I actually think it's a conversation where we actually need all of those people in the room. I'm convinced it's the right thing to do," he said.

But research out of the UK has branded their version "expensive and ineffective".

A study published this year in the Annals of Oncology journal found many of the drugs funded with the £1.27b ($2.46n) spent between 2010 and 2016, were not worth money, rarely extended life, and often had adverse side-effects.

An earlier study out of York University found if the £230 million (NZ$484m) spent on the UK's Cancer Drugs Fund between April 2013 and April 2014 had instead gone into the wider public health system, the nation would have gained five times as many "quality-adjusted life years".

Clark said such a fund's success would come down to the parameters placed around it.

"Because if you were investing early in medicines, the reason you would do it would be because they had early promise of delivering more quality-adjusted life years - that would be the very reason you would invest early.

"And it's also the reason you'd want to put restrictions around how long that continued, because you'd want to make further decisions based on evidence as it came to hand," he said.

The early promise for some of the drugs was "extraordinary".

"But if you then subsequently gained evidence that further research had shown it was less beneficial, then you wouldn't want to be committed to funding those drugs over the longer term."

Last year, it was revealed former Labour leader Andrew Little hosted drug company executives for dinner at Labour's Parliamentary offices, just months before announcing the party's policy to introduce a drug fund and override Pharmac and fund melanoma drug Keytruda.

The dinner was organised by Medicines NZ and included representatives from Keytruda makers Merck Sharp and Dohme, Pfizer, Roche, Healthcare Logistics and Sanofi.