Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Baroness Warnock Excerpts

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly]

I thank my noble and learned friend for helping me out. I thought that I said at the onset that this was felt by the Government to be outside the scope of the Private Member’s Bill. But they are very sympathetic to the idea and have already started to have conversations. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, talked about safety and, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, responsibility is another thing. The Government see it as the responsibility of doctors to enter on to the registry. In the mean time, I ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Baroness Warnock (CB)]

Surely it is important that this register should be compulsory. The obvious point is that if you innovate and it fails and then you do not register, that would destroy the whole point of having a register.

[Lord O'Donnell]

Perhaps I may come back on whether it is relevant for this Bill. As I understand it, the Minister said that the Government were deciding to set up this register and therefore it is not a question of what is in the Bill. We were asking whether the Government can make the register compulsory and how they would do that.