Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Masham of Ilton and Lord Mackay of Clashfern

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, I support the amendment, as do many organisations. They say that it is essential that provision is made for collecting and sharing data to ensure that information, both on beneficial and harmful effects of treatment, is captured for the benefit and subsequent use of patients. We should be much better at collecting data than we are at present. This is important for research, but also for safeguarding patients. I hope that the amendment will be accepted.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, one of the purposes of the amendment, as I understand it, is as the noble Baroness has said: to record the results of an innovative treatment for the benefit of succeeding generations. If innovative treatment has been successful in a particular case, the details of that case are required to make sure of the extent to which the results might be expected to follow in another case. I regard it as important that that should happen. I understand—no doubt this will be explained later—that there are possibilities of voluntary registration systems being set up. The Government may be able to help us on that, but I regard it as essential, if the Bill is to achieve its purpose, that the innovations, particularly if they are successful, are not kept secret. If they are unsuccessful it is also wise to warn people off later attempts.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Masham of Ilton and Lord Mackay of Clashfern

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, I first want to ask a quick question to my noble friend Lady Hollins or the Minister. Would the words physical and mental include those people who have a drug and/or an alcohol problem? Would addiction come under “mental”? I do not want those people to fall through the net, as was said by the previous speaker.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I just wanted to say a word or two about the drafting involved in this. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, pointed out that the opening clause, which is the foundation of the health service, states:

“The Secretary of State must continue the promotion in England of a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement … in the physical and mental health of the people of England, and

(b) in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness”.

That is precisely the phrase that is the subject of the amendment, but it comes earlier in the Bill. I cannot believe that when the people who put the health service together in 1946 used that phrase, they did not have in mind that physical and mental health involved the idea that if there was illness, it could be either physical or mental. If we are to change an exactly similar phrase later in the Bill, consideration needs to be given as to whether we should do it at the beginning which is, after all, in many ways the most important place.

I have every sympathy with all that has been said, and I am sure that it is right that we take serious account of it. We must remember the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, about the need for integration of treatment for mental illness along with physical illness. Anything that separates them might not be conducive to progress. I have every sympathy with the proposal.