Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ben Gummer and Steve Baker

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

I gently remind the hon. Lady that the difference is that changes to services provided at hospitals are now made on the recommendation of clinicians, rather than of bureaucrats and Ministers, as it was under the previous Government, in which she served. In respect of her own hospital, the number of diagnostic tests for cancer are up by 22,000 since 2010, the number of MRI scans by 6,000, the number of CT scans by 7,000 and the number of operations by 1,800. That is a record of which to be proud.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Wycombe hospital could benefit from one of the excellent models in the “Five Year Forward View”. Will my hon. Friend make sure these excellent proposals are carried through with energy and alacrity?

[Ben Gummer]

The strength of the NHS forward view is that it is a creation of the NHS itself, and we, as the only party to back it in full with cash, will give it the kind of support it needs to make sure it is delivered.

Pharmacies and the NHS

Debate between Ben Gummer and Steve Baker

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) on provoking a stimulating debate, and one in which I have learned a great deal. In particular, he emphasised the local impact that pharmacies can have, while the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) clearly explained some of the opportunities that can be seized through pharmacies.

In Lane End in my constituency, a pharmacy opened alongside a dispensing GP practice, but if I remember the circumstances correctly, the practice was forbidden from serving local people; we had an absurd situation in which the purpose of the regulation made my constituents’ lives less convenient and less easy, in the interests of somehow distributing profit fairly. The debate has brought in some of the wider aspects for society and some of the things that a heavily regulatory state has messed up.

The purpose of prices, profit and loss in a market society is to guide individuals and voluntary associations into best serving society. If pharmacists wish to open a pharmacy, they should simply be able to do so, if they can find a place to do it, can do so within the law and are selling lawful products. They should be able to get on with it and serve whomever comes through the door. Instead, we have the situation described by my hon. Friend—people have to fill in a 200-page application form and might subsequently find themselves subject to particular restrictions on whom they may or may not supply.

One of the issues with a market system is that business men are profit-maximising, which is both a problem and a benefit. The problem is that business men do not like competition much, because that is what drives down prices and therefore profit. That is the crux of the matter. The purpose of the Government is not to entrench in law and regulation the tendency of business men to seek rent—excess income through capturing the state—but that is just what is happening when competition is inhibited by restrictions placed on a dispensing practice simply because a neighbour has opened a pharmacy. Certainly, on the siting of pharmacies, the Minister should seek to abolish rules and controls wherever he can, because they are getting in the way.

[Ben Gummer]

In my address, I omitted to mention the whole range of practice payments paid to pharmacists simply for, in effect, being open. The problem is that the opening of a new pharmacy creates a liability for the NHS to pay those practice payments, no matter who does or does not go through its doors. That shows the rather extraordinary situation that we have ended up with in respect of how pharmacies are remunerated.

[Steve Baker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I am extremely grateful to him for bringing that up. We pretend that we live in a capitalist society—I have said this in the House before—but if our system is capitalism, I am not a capitalist. We have an absurd hybrid system, in which the state constantly intervenes in order to give people rents. It is peculiar that we call it a free market society.

The purpose of our all being here, of course, is to improve our constituents’ lives. When I say such things, my intention is to ensure that my constituents—all our constituents—have better access to pharmacies. In the House, we have a real consensus about an increase in the services offered by pharmacists being of benefit to all our constituents. What I want is for the Government to get out of the way, not to use taxpayers’ money to provide the payments that my hon. Friend mentioned and to allow pharmacists to get on and best serve the public in a way that is in the public’s best interests—a way that can be discovered only through experimentation and entrepreneurship.

On pricing, I want to make the point that in this country we are not good at haggling. We should haggle over prices and drive them down. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the scandal of some simple and inexpensive medicines that ought to cost pennies, but cost very much more. What I see at work there could be something that I witnessed when I was a contractor working with Government: Departments are not good at driving down prices. They tend to accept the price that they are given—“Oh, that must be the market price.” No—they should set the market price by demanding that they are charged less and, if suppliers do not provide the goods at a lower price, they should go elsewhere.

That brings me to generics and parallel imports, a subject touched on earlier. We ought to be making sure that the big pharmaceutical firms do not hold the NHS over a barrel. I have heard some of their arguments, and of course producing a new drug is an expensive business, but we should not be held over a barrel. In a market society, people should be held to account to drive down costs and drive up quality.

Johnson & Johnson, based in my constituency, has a wonderful credo, which was written when the basis of a free society was under threat in an earlier time. That credo sets out the principles on which the industry should be founded, and one such should be: no legal privileges, wherever possible.

[Steve Baker]

My hon. Friend has identified what might be a missed opportunity because an enormous effort is going into preventing that fraud. With the opportunities that electronic communication offers today, it should be possible to use some of that information in other contexts. With that in mind, I will turn to the internet.

Clearly, everyone wants to ensure that prescribing takes place properly, but when people have been prescribed medicines it should be possible for them to buy over the internet in appropriate circumstances. I am particularly aware that homeopaths have had great difficulty with the internet because of the need for people to present physically to buy a medicine.

We cannot have it both ways on homeopathy—either the medicines are relatively harmless and can be treated with scorn by the medical profession, in which case they should be freely available on the internet, or they are dangerous and should be tightly regulated. Homeopaths’ experience suggests that people can take responsibility for themselves and buy products on the internet.

[Ben Gummer]

My hon. Friend touches on an interesting issue. Given the fact that the Government are going to great lengths to try to get GPs to do more consultations on the internet and Skype—great news for many of my constituents, especially those in busy jobs with difficult hours—it seems obvious to extend such innovation to the dispensing of pharmaceuticals.

[Steve Baker]

My hon. Friend is right. In the 21st century, we should be waking up to the opportunities to use technology to drive down costs and drive up service. People are so busy today, so why can they not have consultations in their offices with Skype, and why can pharmacists not prescribe to offices with Skype? The solution to these problems is for the Government to abolish whatever rules and controls they can and wherever they can, and to liberalise when abolition is not possible.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Ben Gummer and Steve Baker

Monday 19th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

I, too, support the general thrust of Lords amendments 16 to 18, but I completely understand the Minister’s concerns about the effect they would have on the legislation.

I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on the need for some sort of restatement of our fundamental liberty with regard to private property, which is one of the underpinning foundations of English law. To that end, my addition to the points made by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and my hon. Friend is to ask whether we might have a restatement of that general principle. The amendment gives a negative statement about those powers that may not be used except in certain circumstances. I wonder whether, in their review, the Government might restate the general principle of the sanctity of property and of private property, so that that should be the bar by which all future incursions against private property will be judged, and so that exactly that kind of guard might be imposed on future Governments—a point to which my hon. Friend rightly alluded.

I am very much reassured by my hon. Friend the Minister’s assurance that the matter will be considered within the time scale promised. On previous points where further work by the Government was needed, he has given an assurance and delivered on it exactly as he said he would. I have no doubt at all that he will do so in this case, and his comments so far give me great confidence.

[Steve Baker]

When I look at Lords amendments 16 to 18, my instinct is certainly to support them, but after many, many hours in Committee with my hon. Friend the Minister, I know that he has a thoroughgoing commitment to progress towards liberty, so I assure him of my future support for simplifying powers of entry. As I have said previously to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who is in her place, when the knock comes on the door, householders should be able to know whether the person knocking has a right to enter, or whether they are permitted to refuse entry. However, having sat through both the Public Bill Committee’s evidence sessions and heard contributions from Opposition Members, I know that the Minister has met the forces of reaction. I encourage him not to succumb to reactionary opposition or to the notion that certain powers should be elevated over liberty in the interests of security or expediency. I am confident that he will be steadfast in the cause of liberty, so I will support the Government.

Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

Debate between Ben Gummer and Steve Baker

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to say this. Given that I sit in this place as an elected politician, of course I believe that there is a role for democratic politics and for government. What I am expressing, however, is a deep scepticism based on solid theory, and indeed on the practice of the last 100 years, about any attempt to organise society using the state. I believe that such attempts are generally a mistake. That is not to say that the practice should be eliminated—far be it from any Member of the House of Commons to suggest that—but the fact is that it has not been a great success.

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct in saying that we are currently taxing and spending to an enormous degree, but we must make up our minds about whether that is healthy. It seems to me that the degree to which society has power is determined by the degree to which the state has power. The more power the state takes to itself, the less power society will have. I am afraid we must face up to the reality that, while the state is spending more than half of national income, human social co-operation is largely directed by the coercive power of the state.

My hon. Friend may well say that the logical conclusion is as she described, but I think that that was recognised by the old Liberals of the 19th century. Indeed, I wish that the new Liberals of the 21st century would pick up the same point. However, I do not suggest that we should go there immediately; I am referring to the direction of travel.

[Ben Gummer]

While I would demur a little from every point my hon. Friend has made, may I draw attention to the key issue of this Bill, which is localism? When a private business makes decisions about spending money, that is really about the allocation of capital and therefore the location of the business makes little difference. We are talking about voluntary organisations however, and they depend on people giving their time, often for free, in local areas. We cannot import a new community, so we are trying to provide the means by which public tenderers can take account of that reality, of which private businesses do not have to take account in the same way.

[Steve Baker]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend’s point.

In conclusion, my argument is as follows. If we are to have a healthy and productive society, and if we are to build a better society, we must embrace what has been agreed by Members on both sides of the House. We have all strongly agreed on much of what has been said today, but the key question is: what is the role of the coercive power of the state in building that better society? For me, there is a fundamental disagreement about that role today, as there has always been.

I do not intend to press the Bill to a Division at this stage, although I remain hugely sceptical about both the national social enterprise strategy and local strategies. It is my view that we should follow the advice of the man who gave me my reference point as I began on this process, a man who accepted the value of both business and charity. If we are to liberate society, and liberate individuals to create a better world, we must follow his advice, which was this: “Repeat after me—lower taxes.”