Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Patel

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

Thank you, Chairman. It is a pleasure to resume where the Committee left off last Monday. I will speak to Amendment 19, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. I congratulate the noble Baroness, who spoke with eloquence and passion. On Zoom, you can see faces more clearly and you could tell by looking at her while she was giving her speech that she really feels for the cause. I will speak briefly to support the noble Baroness in her efforts to use human rights legislation to get medical therapies available to patients, particularly in developing countries.

I am no expert in human rights law, but I have seen at first hand what lack of everyday medicines, which we in developed countries have easy access to, does to patients in need in developing countries. In my own medical speciality of obstetrics, I have come across situations where mothers die, or end up with lifelong disability, for lack of availability of cheap medications that would have saved them from dying of childbirth-related haemorrhage. Medicine that costs less than £2 would have saved those mothers’ lives in a very short time.

Despite progress, over 2 billion people worldwide face obstacles in getting the medicines that they need. The current research and development model is mostly market driven and is ill equipped to deliver medicines for neglected tropical diseases and emerging infectious diseases that only affect those in developing countries. Only 1% of the total number of new medicines coming to market are licensed for treating tropical and rare diseases in poorer countries. Another big barrier is the pricing mechanism that makes what we may regard as cheap medicines unavailable in poorer countries because of cost. A human rights model, proposed by the WHO and the United Nations, for making more treatments available in poorer countries, faces serious obstacles because of world trade and patent regulations. The monopoly market power of patent rights plays against the availability of medicines for poorer countries.

All that being said, a soft-power model can sometimes be effective. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has had considerable success in its efforts to create an access-to-medicine index for pharma to demonstrate its commitment to getting medicines to the developing world. One example is the generic medicine for treatment of hepatitis C, but some pharma companies prevent early recourse to generic versions of medicines through extending patent laws by using tactics such as data exclusivity. I heard an announcement today that, if the Sanofi and GSK vaccine works, they will provide 200 million doses of it free to the developing world. That is good news, but it is far away from the billions of doses that we will require.

If there is a serious desire for the world to make treatments available to patients in poorer countries, at a price that they can afford, laws will be needed to change the market-driven model to a more rigidly applied human-rights-driven one. The noble Baroness is right to highlight the problem. The Government can help by working with other Governments to create opportunities for easier access to medicines for developing countries. There has to be a way to get around the model of profit versus patients.

[Lord Stunell (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has said about the excellent speech of my noble friend Lady Sheehan. I support her arguments and those of all the previous speakers. I could never hope to bring the level of expertise that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, does to this subject.

I want to focus, very simply, on what happens next—and what happens next is based on what has happened so far. Proposed new subsection (2)(d) in Amendment 19 is an affirmation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was first passed in 1966 and the United Kingdom Government ratified 10 years later in 1976. My first question, therefore, is to ask the Minister: do the UK Government still stand by that covenant, or is it another piece of international legislation that can be broken in certain limited and specific circumstances? I think that noble Lords will want to hear the Minister say very clearly that the Government are still committed to the full meaning of that covenant. If he does, I hope he will also acknowledge that the key feature of that covenant is that it requires access to medical care and treatment to be affordable and available to all. That is exactly what the second part of Amendment 19 is talking about. It aims to give teeth and real substance to that covenant and to make sure that medicines and treatment are indeed affordable and available to all.

What is the risk that we are guarding against? Why do we need to do this? The noble Lord, Lord Patel, also focused on those questions. Although there are many risks, the leading risk which this amendment deals with is greedy pharmaceutical companies. The story of Gilead selling its drug in the United States for £2,300, when it can be manufactured with a profit for £9, was drawn to our attention by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on Monday. That is just one of many examples of companies unscrupulously using their monopoly to reap profits at the expense of those who need the treatment. Sadly, there have been many other examples of it. In the current worldwide search for a vaccine, the pressure on companies to deliver a treatment, and the pressure from communities throughout the world to receive it, means that the risk of profiteering and gouging are very much higher.

Of course pharmaceutical companies are fully entitled to recover their costs, and that should include the costs of their research, including for the research on products which they cannot bring to market for one reason or another; and of course they should be entitled to make a profit as well. But in the case of Covid-19 vaccines, nearly all the money has been pumped into the research from the public via Governments around the world. Hundreds of millions of pounds from the United Kingdom Government have gone to these firms. The Government therefore have some really powerful levers to pull to make sure that there is fair and equitable pricing by those companies and fair and equitable sales around the world.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that we have a WTO TRIPS agreement that protects pharmaceutical companies’ monopoly purchasing. But attached to that is the Doha declaration of 2001, which gives Governments the right to step in to prevent that profiteering and price gouging. Under the declaration, the United Kingdom has in principle the right to grant compulsory licences so that other manufacturers can make the product in an alternative way at an alternative price. We need to hear from the Minister today that the UK Government will use the powers available to them in the Doha declaration to prioritise the safeguarding of access to medicines for all right round the world. “All” has to mean all, not just within the United Kingdom but worldwide, as my noble friend Lady Sheehan made so clear, especially in low and middle-income countries.

The role of the United Kingdom in ensuring that an effective worldwide response to Covid actually happens may well require compulsory licensing using the basis provided by the Doha declaration. Certainly, having that basis, and having this amendment passed, gives the Government a credible threat that they will indeed make sure that medicines are available for all. I look forward to hearing the Minister agree that, if not Amendment 19 itself, at least a loud and clear commitment from the Government to implement their powers under the Doha declaration is very much a part of their armoury in tackling the current situation.