Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

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

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. The Bill covers a multitude of issues, but apart from giving massive powers to Ministers it provides very little detail. It is an empty bucket. Henry VIII would have been proud of it.

Like others, I have read the Delegated Powers Committee’s report on the Bill. I have rarely read a report from this respected committee that is so trenchant in its criticism of a Bill and of the government memorandum, which failed miserably to justify those elements that the DPRRC finds to be “inappropriate”. The powers given to Ministers are not just for transferring EU regulations into UK law; they are extensive—almost unfettered—powers to amend, extend or disapply regulations, breaking many of which would be a criminal offence carrying a two-year prison sentence.

Many of these regulations would be laid by the negative procedure, with the excuse that they might be urgent. Even those that carry the affirmative procedure do not allow Parliament to scrutinise them or amend them in the same way as we would if they were done by primary legislation. Ministers claim that there is no alternative other than putting all the detail of all the regulatory changes into primary legislation. This is nonsense and the Government know it.

I have to agree that it is not always possible or even desirable to use primary legislation for technical changes, but there is no detail at all in the Bill about what changes the Government intend about human and veterinary medicine and very little about medical devices regulations. The Government even plan to disapply some regulations simply by introducing a protocol, thereby completely bypassing any parliamentary scrutiny at all. It is rightly described by the DPRRC as “camouflaging legislation”. Its overall conclusion is that the Bill transfers powers from the European Union directly to Ministers, completely bypassing Parliament.

If this is what the Government mean by taking back control, it is exactly what remainers feared when the EU referendum was put to the people. Control is going to Ministers, not Parliament. In a parliamentary democracy, that is unacceptable. Under the Bill, Ministers could completely rewrite the regulatory frameworks for medicines and medical devices, so it is not surprising that noble Lords have received so many very concerned briefings from the field.

Having in mind the fact that patient safety must be at the heart of the legislation, what constraints do we find on Ministers in the Bill? In making regulations, Ministers must have in mind three issues: patient safety; the availability of medicines and medical devices; and the attractiveness of the UK for clinical trials and the supply of medicines and medical devices. I was surprised when I first read the Bill to find the word “attractiveness”. I have never seen it in a health Bill before—a trade Bill, yes, but not a health Bill. My primary question to the Minister is: is this a hierarchy of issues and is patient safety paramount? I would not want rigorous regulation of the safety of medicines to be subservient in any way to the ability to attract producers or researchers to come to the UK to take advantage of a more lenient regulatory regime.

Frankly, if the Government want to attract people here to do research and clinical trials, I can think of no better way than to remain as closely aligned as possible to the EMA and set up the safest, fairest, most rigorous and transparent regulatory regime in the world. This Bill does not do that. I ask for detail, transparency, appropriate parliamentary oversight and the whole package of recommendations from the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege.