Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Baroness Penn Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Cumberlege and her committee on producing such a thorough and important report.

I draw attention to a practice that many of us clinicians used for years. It detected clinical problems in treatment, equipment and management early on. We had weekly meetings for an hour or so to discuss any complications that had occurred in the previous week. It was attended by consultants, junior staff, medical students, nurses and a manager or two. It was always an interesting and very instructive meeting, and it brought problems to light early on. People were very honest about their mistakes; it became rather like the general confession. Of course, it was essential to have as a chairman of these meetings somebody who was friendly and encouraged people to adopt the attitude of “There but for the grace of God go I”. It was a very inexpensive and successful kind of quality assurance.

I have a few questions to put to the Minister. First, do the Government plan to mandate the tracking of all medical devices used in the UK and not just those selected at random? Secondly, will the use of medical device registries be extended to patient outcomes? Thirdly, will the Government go ahead and establish the post of a patient safety commissioner, as strongly recommended by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege and many of your Lordships? Some years ago, I used to carry out transplant operations and became very familiar with the problems involved.

I emphasise that in Committee I shall fully support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, dealing with forced organ harvesting. As mentioned before, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC stated in his report that forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China. [Inaudible.]

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I am afraid that we can no longer hear my noble friend. If he would make his concluding point, that would be wonderful.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

Perhaps those who spend so much time attacking the Government about this and that might like to turn their attacks on the Chinese Government, whose morally corrupt behaviour demonstrates to the world what is going on in China.

Finally, I again congratulate my noble friend on her outstanding report.