Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I welcome this Bill. It is crucial that we have an effective regulatory system in this country, so we should enable the Government to amend existing regulations post Brexit. We could be a little more ambitious, however. Government time is precious, and I doubt we will have many occasions to discuss medicines and medical devices, which I suspect is why many of my colleagues have raised things that are not covered in the current legislation.

In a world in which medicines and medical devices are changing fast, the Government need to take greater powers to meet those changes and take advantage of them post Brexit. They need to be able not just to amend but to create regulations. My real concern is that the parameters of these new powers are drafted in such a way that they give power to the Government only to amend existing regulations—four sets of them. The Bill does not give the Government the power to do more, which is a missed opportunity.

Although I am conscious of the need to consider this at a European level, medicines and medical devices are, for most of us, a global issue. This Bill should not just be about ensuring we can cope after leaving Europe; it should be about the opportunity that can be created in the new global world we are entering.

A lot has been said, and rightly so, about the challenge of medical devices, which is a fast-growing area in which Britain is a leader, but it involves a huge variety of small and medium-sized enterprises, and innovation within devices is happening at a faster rate than within medicines. That is what we need to address, and I do not feel we achieve it with this Bill.

This legislation will not help with the challenges of breast implants, vaginal mesh and spinal implants that crumble, because the registry that is to be created is within the constraints and confines of existing registries that, by and large, collect information about devices. They do not collect information about the journey of those devices through the patient experience, from implant through to removal and replacement, including where the device may be defective. That information, properly recorded, would enable us not only to recall devices that we knew were faulty, but to go to patients in whom we knew a device had been implanted to expedite dealing with a medical emergency.

More importantly, medicine is about innovation and creativity. Unless we have a mechanism to evaluate the progress of medical devices implanted in individuals, how can we know which ones work and which ones do not? If a patient does not re-present, and if there is nothing added to the record, we will never know. Such a registry is mission critical.

The Government should be brave and consider a new clause to create such a registry, and they need to consider how we can consolidate the existing registries. There are many national, European and international registries for particular disease areas, and a lot of thought has been given to what best practice and the ideal registry look like. The International Medical Device Regulators Forum set out in 2016 exactly what it thought that should look like, and it seems to me that the Government would be well advised to consider that. It suggests collecting information not just about the device but about the journey through and in the patient. It seems to me that only through a change to the Bill will we achieve what we want to achieve.

Things probably go beyond that. Indeed, some of my hon. Friends have explained the complexity of understanding what a “device” is—does it include lip fillers, artificial intelligence and so on? The list of new innovations grows and will, to be honest, grow beyond current human imagination and we need a regulatory system that enables us to take advantage of that and regulate appropriately and quickly. We therefore need the capacity to change the definition of a device, and right now we do not have that because we are effectively adopting the definitions in the rules we adopted from Europe. We are giving ourselves the ability to fiddle, but not to change them fundamentally, and that is actually quite important.

We need to create an international search database so that we can deliver on some of the challenges of urgent harm, which we can prevent and deal with once a defective device is identified, and so that we can create something that gives us the opportunity to be world leaders in not only medical devices but medicines. It seems to me that that is the opportunity. Why do we constrain ourselves to being a follower? Why do we always talk about keeping up with Europe? Why not be the leaders? The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence was always set out as the global standard that everybody looked to—as absolutely what we wanted in every country. Why not have exactly the right system, whatever the NICE or the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency of the future looks like? Why not set the standard that others then follow?

In the earlier part of the Bill, where it covers the regulation of medicine as opposed to medical devices, there are some changes that look to the future—that is certainly the case for the changes regarding medical trials. However, it seems to me that that is a missed opportunity not only to consider the sort of regulatory system we might want in the future, but—even though we have NICE, the MHRA and notified bodies for the lower levels of medical devices, which provide CE marks— to look at this all over again. As has been said, some things that seem to be harmless and very simple, and seem simply to merit a CE mark, can become very dangerous in how they are ultimately used by a practitioner. We might need to look at all this again, but the power to do that simply is not in the Bill.

There is also nothing in the medicines section, as far as I can see, about increasing the speed of access to new developments and new medicines. That has always been a mantra of this Government, but I cannot see any provision for it. If we had control to look at the MHRA and NICE, we could do that, but as the Minister well knows the reality is that she has no power. The power to deal with the regulatory system and the regulations set by the MHRA and NICE is in the gift of NHS England. Following the Lansley reforms, that power is not now in the gift of the Government and it seems to me that the Government, who have this proactive agenda, should be taking the initiative so that they can be more direct in ensuring that we have the regulatory system we need. At the moment, all we have is the ability to limit the money that is available.

For example, the Government have talked about an innovative medicines fund, but I see nothing in the Bill to provide for that. I understand that the idea is that it can be just an extension of the cancer drugs fund, but, I ask the Minister, is that actually right? There should be different criteria—there will be different tests and different needs. Simply extending the cancer drugs fund will muddy the water and not deliver what we are really looking for, which is something that looks specifically at innovative medicines, which need clearly defining and properly clarifying. If we are to cover both groups, we need to increase the pot, but there is no suggestion of doing so.

There is a lot still to be done. Earlier, one of my colleagues made the good point that if we are to be a global leader rather than just a follower, we ought perhaps to look at how our marketing authorisations could be adopted and accepted in other countries, effectively saving costs and getting medicines to market faster. The UK would therefore be seen as the place to come for one’s marketing authorisation, rather than Europe, despite the size differential, because we would be the market leader in the mechanism to develop that.

For me, the Government have made a good start, but there is much to do. I look forward very much to the Minister’s closing remarks and, more importantly, to her confirmation that the Government have an ambitious vision and will be working hard during the following stages of the Bill’s consideration, of which I would very much like to be part, to consider changes that will deliver opportunities that the as drafted Bill does not offer. That said, it is a good start and something we can build on.