No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government
Debate between George Freeman and Christopher Chope(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
When my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was winding up the debate yesterday evening, she said that our country could ultimately make a success of no deal—although she of course was emphasising that she did not believe that that was the best outcome. That was before the vote. The outcome of the vote a few minutes later is one to which the Prime Minister certainly must respond.
The feeling in this House—432 Members, of whom I was one—is that the Prime Minister’s deal, however good she thinks it is, is a bad deal, and I have heard nothing from the Prime Minister that implies that she accepts the verdict given by the House last night that her deal is a bad deal. The Prime Minister was right to anticipate such a scenario. In her Lancaster House speech two years ago, she feared that the European Union would only offer us a bad deal—a punishment deal, as she put it. She therefore emphasised that no deal would be better than a bad deal, and she emphasised all the benefits that come from no deal—including our ability to trade freely across the world and our ability to be able to enter into a new economic model—and from being masters of our own destiny as an independent nation. Those were the benefits of no deal that she set out. Obviously she, like everyone else, wanted to get a good deal. As we have not got a good deal, I plead with my right hon. Friend to ensure that she does not close the option of no deal and, indeed, intensifies preparations for no deal. That is the best way of concentrating the minds of those in the European Union that we are serious about an alternative.
If someone goes into a negotiation and says, “The only alternatives are to accept the deal or stay in the European Union,” what will happen? The European Union is holding us to ransom. We need to be saying that we are confident, we believe in ourselves and we can make a great success of no deal. Unfortunately, that has not been the negotiating stance of the Prime Minister and her advisers, and we are suffering as a consequence.
Last Saturday, I had a public meeting in my constituency attended by more than 200 people. A lot of anxiety was expressed about whether the Brexit we have been promised will be delivered. It was great to hear the Prime Minister reasserting her commitment to deliver Brexit, but if she does not deliver that with the deal that was rejected last night, how will she deliver it if she rejects the no-deal alternative? My constituents were worried that they could see the referendum commitment to leaving the European Union somehow being undermined by the Prime Minister and the Government. That in turn was undermining their trust.
George Freeman
My hon. Friend is making a compelling case that we should go back to Europe and renegotiate. He knows that we are at the end of the process and time is running out. He also knows, and I think regrets, that we are not ready for no deal. Is he not actually making a case to extend article 50 to get the right deal that he will support?
Sir Christopher Chope
No, I am not. Two years ago, we were told by the Prime Minister that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed and that everything was going to be agreed within two years. We now know that effectively nothing has been agreed, certainly as far as the future relationship is concerned. Just trying to buy more time will not solve the problem; we need to leave the European Union on 29 March and then we can have negotiations following on from that where we will be standing on a level playing field and able to stand up for our own interests. We will have called the European Union’s bluff. It is trying to undermine our ability to be able to do what we want.
If someone is unsuccessful in a conflict, we expect the victor to impose conditions on the vanquished. What is happening here is that the European Union is seeking to impose conditions on us because we have the temerity to want to leave the European Union. That is wholly unacceptable and the Government’s negotiating position has been supine throughout.
Off-patent Drugs Bill
Debate between George Freeman and Christopher Chope(10 years ago)
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George Freeman
Let me be clear. What I am saying is that the Government support the intention behind the Bill, which is to achieve greater use of off-label drugs in different indications, but we disagree with the Bill’s proposal for legislation to require the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to license them. For reasons that I will set out, we do not think that is the problem or, therefore, that the proposal is the right solution. Nevertheless, I welcome the fact that the issue has been raised. It sits foursquare with my mission as the Minister with responsibility for life sciences. I am already working on it and am very keen to make sure that the active work streams I am pursuing embrace the intent behind the Bill.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North for his work. The House has often debated this issue and I am well aware of the strength of feeling among Members of all parties about the importance of, and urgency involved in, getting both new and existing medicines to patients more quickly.
I should also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his service in this House. As he has said, this is his last year, and I am sure I speak for all of us in paying tribute to and thanking him for all he has done, not only in contributing to the quality of this institution, but in campaigning on this issue.
As my hon. Friend and others may know, I came to this House and my ministerial position after a career in biomedical research—a subject that is very close to my heart—so I am delighted to be able to discuss it and the Bill this morning. During my 15 years working in biomedical research, I saw first hand the serious challenges involved in bringing a new drug to market. I want to address how the landscape of drug development and discovery is changing; the profound way in which technology is changing what is possible; how the economics of 21st-century drug discovery are changing; and the resulting challenges and opportunities for us to do exactly what my hon. Friend seeks to promote, which is greater and more novel use of existing drugs for those patients who will benefit. I will then deal with the key points raised by him.
A rapid transition is taking place from a model of 20th-century drug development whereby the NHS, patients and the health system waited passively and all too patiently for the introduction of new drugs that had been tested, proven and developed with the claim that they would work and were safe for everybody. Over the past several decades, the regulatory barrier required to justify that claim has got higher and higher, as have the costs of developing drugs. On average, it typically takes 10 to 15 years and £1 billion to £1.5 billion to develop a new drug.
My hon. Friend referred to patent life. Members will know how the industry works, but it is worth repeating that, in order to justify the enormous sunk cost of the billions of pounds required to bring a new drug to market, the law provides for the inventor of a new drug to have a patent for 20 years. That mechanism ensures that those who successfully bring an innovation to market are able to get some exclusivity on sales, which allows them to pay for those sunk costs. When a drug becomes off-patent, the generics market kicks in and anybody can make the drug, provided it is made to the right standard and is safe, which allows all of us to benefit from that drug at a vastly reduced price. Indeed, one of the major challenges facing the sector is that, as the cost and time taken to develop a drug increases, the pharmaceutical industry’s pipeline of new drugs is not sufficient. The problem is referred to as the patent cliff, and the sector is going through a radical transition to try to deal with it.
The problem is that the more we know about genetics and the way in which different patients respond to different drugs and diseases, the more we realise that the blockbuster, one-size-fits-all drug that we have got used to the industry giving us is not what we need. What we need are drugs that are much more targeted at patients and their underlying genetic and pharmacokinetic profile. We want drug discovery to be driven by our increasingly sophisticated understanding of how different patients respond to different drugs and diseases.
Underlying that problem is an extraordinary opportunity for this country. In order to reorientate drug discovery around patients, we need an infrastructure that allows people to work in world-class research hospitals with access, at the very highest ethical and regulatory level, to tissues, biomarkers, electronic patient data and longitudinal cohort studies. Nowhere in the world is better equipped to lead that model of translational, personalised and stratified medicine than Britain with the NHS, and through my appointment the Government have signalled their commitment to exploit that opportunity.
We believe there is a real opportunity for the UK and the NHS to lead in the emerging field of stratified and targeted medicines, because no other territories in the world have our 50-year history of an integrated public health system, the records that go with it, its ethical and regulatory standards or its world-class centres of research excellence. If we embrace that model, using genomics and data to understand better how different patients respond, we will also be able to look back at the pharmacopoeia of known and existing drugs and re-profile them for use in particular patient groups, because it will have become clear that they will be effective for them.
My hon. Friend might be interested to know that the re-profiling of drugs is itself a major subsector of the life sciences sector. Whole companies, analysts and investors are devoted to mining the pharmacopoeia to find secondary uses, with the intention, of course, of re-patenting the secondary, novel use of an existing drug through tweaking the chemistry and providing the basis for a proprietary claim. Good luck to them—I wish them well—but what my hon. Friend and I want to see is the ability better to use that information in order to find existing drugs which, in their current form, would have a benign impact on a particular patient group. Doctors are perfectly free to use those drugs at the moment.
The truth is that whichever model of drug discovery we pursue, any drug has to be licensed as safe by the MHRA—or, in Europe, by the European Medicines Agency—and then NICE carries out a technology appraisal and makes a recommendation to the NHS about whether such a drug or device has a sufficient cost-benefit to be worth using. Despite all that, the decision on what to prescribe in the end rests, rightly, with clinicians. We cannot and should not legislate to tie clinicians’ hands. Rightly, it is up to clinicians to decide what to use for their patients.
I want to submit to the House and to my hon. Friend that the challenge does not relate to passing legislation to require the MHRA to license the new use of an existing drug, because the lack of a licence is not the restraining factor. In this landscape, the restraining factor is the lack of information for clinicians about off-label use. We need to encourage greater off-label use through NICE, and to have a culture within our health system that actively supports it. In a moment, I will talk about what we are doing and might do to encourage that.
I want to pick up the confusion that may exist about the difference between off-patent and off-label drugs. A drug is off-patent when its patent protection has expired, which means that anyone can produce an identical drug at their own cost. A drug is off-label when it can be used for a new indication for which it was not originally intended. However, clinicians are perfectly able to use drugs for off-label purposes: we do not require the MHRA to license drugs for such a reason, and many drugs are already used in that way.
Let me assure my hon. Friend and other hon. Members that, as the new Minister for life science, I have responsibility for the National Institute for Health Research, which underpins clinical research in the NHS with £1 billion a year. It looks not just at new drugs, although we are very good at that, but at the whole pharmacopeia and how existing medicines are used, and provides research on side effects, efficacy and outcomes for the MHRA and NICE.
We have created a new department at the heart of the Government to tackle precisely the issues that my hon. Friend has raised. I have been in post for only 100 days, but I want to talk about what we are doing to try to accelerate access for patients to new medicines, and to existing medicines with novel indications. I am sure that he is delighted to know that, as the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) reminded the House, my principal mission is to accelerate access to new drugs, including to new uses for existing drugs, for the benefit of NHS patients.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North was kind enough to refer to the Government’s commitment to the cancer drugs fund. He rightly identified that our real commitment is to ensure that if patients suffer because of NICE recommendations in relation to particularly expensive drugs, additional money is made available to prevent that from happening. The problem is one of health economics and NICE appraisals, rather than of licensing by the MHRA.
My hon. Friend made a very eloquent case, which I support, for the use of off-label drugs. We disagree not on the aim of promoting off-label use, but merely on the mechanism for doing so. As the Minister with responsibility for NICE, I am delighted to assure him and the House that we already have the power to instruct NICE to undertake technology appraisals. I hope that what I will say in a moment about how we intend to use that power and about the work we are doing on a series of ways to accelerate access to new drugs will reassure him that, far from our having any sense of complacency, we are bending our backs to consider every avenue in order to find value within the current pharmacopeia and to support clinicians actively embracing innovative uses of drugs.
It is for that reason that we have decided—controversially in some quarters—to support Lord Saatchi’s Medical Innovation Bill, which is in the House of Lords. It seeks to contribute to this landscape by making it clear in statute that clinicians have the freedom, and should be supported in using the freedom, to embrace innovative uses of both existing and new drugs in the treatment of cancer. His Bill is about making very clear that those freedoms exist, and that clinicians have a duty, under their Hippocratic oath, to explore every innovative opportunity that there is a good clinical basis for believing will be safe and to the benefit of their patients.
The truth is that the problem is as much cultural as legislative. That is the principal reason why the Government are not able to support this Bill, but very much support its aims. I want to say something about what we propose to do to achieve the progress that we all want more quickly and effectively.
So that there is no doubt, let me say that our position is basically that the Bill is not needed. Anyone can apply for a licence for a medicine, and doctors can already prescribe medicines for uses outside their licence, where that is in the best interests of their patients. Doctors do so every day: when they make such a judgment, it is safe, legal and right for them to do so if they feel that they have a basis for doing so.
The truth is that licensing gets a medicine licensed; it does not get it into clinical practice. Whether clinicians use the medicine is driven by NICE guidance, and doctors ultimately decide what is best for their patients. That is why pharmaceutical companies invest so heavily in promoting their products. In turn, NICE exists, as an independent source of advice in the NHS, to provide our clinicians with independent, world-leading advice on the cost-effectiveness and the clinical cost-benefits of new drugs.
If we want to accelerate the uptake of innovative medicines, I suggest that we focus our efforts on NICE guidance and on supporting our medical profession to adopt innovation. Our concern is that the Bill may, completely inadvertently, impede progress on that by making doctors feel that they should not use medicines except for their licensed indications, which is the opposite of the message that we want to send. I understand that that is not the intention of the Bill, but we believe that it might be an inadvertent side effect.
What are we doing? The Government believe that the real issue involves better informing and enabling clinicians to embrace new indications, not dealing with a supposed problem of licensing. We are taking steps with NHS England and NICE to support local drugs and therapeutics networks, and improve how they pick up new evidence and translate it into clinical practice. Indeed, one role of the NIHR is to gather data—that word again—on which drugs are working and on outcomes across the system, and to feed such information back into guidance that is continually updated.
We are also working with hospitals and GPs to support them to work together on delegated prescribing, and to consider how they can change clinical pathways to reflect the very latest evidence across the system. The truth is that we need more evidence about what is working, and we are now gathering that evidence through the NICE associates network and our contacts with local clinicians.
As I have explained to my hon. Friend in our meetings and conversations, we will set up a round-table discussion in the new year, alongside NHS England and NICE, to bring everyone together, review the evidence and agree a strategy and a timetable for action. I am more than happy to extend an invitation to him and those supporting his Bill, as well as Association of Medical Research Charities, to engage actively in that process and to help us to develop a strategy for achieving what we all want, which is the greater use of off-label medicines in areas where the evidence suggests that they can deliver patient benefit.
I can go further and confirm that that is part of a major piece of work that I am leading on how we can and should reissue and revise our guidance to NICE and the MHRA—and review our ambitions as a country in this 21st-century landscape—to make Britain genuinely the best model of patient-centred research. Through the NIHR and our NHS infrastructure, we want to be the best place in the world for people to come to and develop new medicines, or indeed new uses for existing medicines. We want specialist tertiary research hospitals with cohorts of data, to develop new models of commissioning through evaluation, and evaluation through commissioning—two sides of the same coin—so that we can get drugs to patients far quicker than under the traditional model of 10 to 15 years and the £1 billion drug development.
There are undoubted benefits to the use of off-label drugs where there is evidence about their safety, efficacy and side effects. Guidance from the MHRA and the GMC is clear that there is a hierarchy in the use of medicines. In treating patients, clinicians must first consider using a licensed medicine within its licensed indication. If that will not meet the patient’s needs, clinicians can consider a licensed medicine outside its licensed indication. Only if that is not suitable should they consider a medicine that is not licensed at all. A great many medicines can offer benefits to patients when prescribed outside their licensed indications—my hon. Friend has already mentioned tamoxifen and raloxifene for the prevention of familial breast cancer.
My hon. Friend also rightly identified that there can be delays and barriers to using off-patent drugs for new indications. The reasons for that are complex—if only they were so simple that we could solve them with one private Member’s Bill—and in part relate to reluctance by some clinicians to prescribe drugs for conditions for which they are not licensed. There are also issues about the system’s ability to pick up emerging evidence and translate it into new guidance and clinical practice, and about how hospital specialists and GPs can work together to achieve that, by adapting pathways where needed.
What the Bill seeks is already allowed. That is the key reason why, despite agreeing with the Bill’s aim that patients should have access to appropriate drugs, the Government are unable to support it. Medicines are already prescribed legally, safely and appropriately outside their licence indications to large numbers of NHS patients, both in hospitals and in general practice. No funding, legal or regulatory barriers in the system prevent patients from being prescribed a clinically necessary medicine that is not licensed for the treatment indicated. Indeed, doctors regularly prescribe drugs outside their licensed indications. For example, many medicines prescribed to children are unlicensed for paediatric use because historically they have not been formally trialled in children. Two key conditions must be met in such prescribing. First, the clinician must be satisfied that the unlicensed indication meets the clinical needs of the patient and that no suitable licensed alternative is available. Secondly, he or she must explain to the patient that the drug is not licensed, so that they are clear about that.
Evidence suggests that patients trust their clinicians, and that those who are suffering actively embrace research medicine and are keen to be made aware of available drugs that may be not have been originally licensed for that purpose, as long as there is good evidence for it and the clinician supports its use. That position is well established and supported explicitly in guidance to prescribers by the General Medical Council and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Therefore, if a doctor chooses not to prescribe a medicine off label where one is indicated for the patient, that is unlikely to be simply because of the medicine’s licensing status. If a clinician believes that the lack of a licence prevents them from prescribing a drug, that is a different issue to which I will return in a moment.
Under the law regulating medicines, anyone can apply for a licence for a new use for an existing out-of-patent medicine. The Bill seeks to place that responsibility on the Health Secretary, so that he either takes steps to secure licences for off-patent drugs and new indications, or appoints a body to do so. In truth, licensing gets a medicine licensed, but it does not do what we want, which is get it into clinical practice. That requires clinicians to use and prescribe drugs, which is why we have NICE guidance.
The Department of Health holds a small number of licences for anthrax vaccine in the case of national emergency, but the Government rightly view that very much as an exception. Our concern is that if the Secretary of State were to become a routine applicant, or instructed someone else to do that on his or her behalf, they might be open to accusations of interfering in the market and a conflict of interest. There might even be a case for claiming a conflict of interest between the Secretary of State’s role as an applicant competing in the medicines market, and their statutory role as overseer of the system. Ultimately, we worry that that could compromise the Secretary of State’s responsibility for the UK medicines licensing system, were they to become a regular applicant. The idea of a body set up by the Secretary of State to apply for licences does not seem proportionate to the scale or nature of the challenge. If the issues under consideration will not be resolved simply by granting more licences—I do not think they will—there is no need for such new bureaucracy.
We believe that the provisions on NICE in the Bill are unnecessary. The fact that NICE has recommended the unlicensed use of tamoxifen and raloxifene in its clinical guidance should reassure hon. Members on that point, and I stress that we are actively discussing that matter with NICE and wish to promote it. I know my hon. Friend is concerned about the level of uptake of those drugs, despite NICE’s approval, and by focusing on the NICE appraisal process and guidance with an associated legal funding requirement, the Bill seeks to remove a perceived funding barrier to the implementation of off-label drugs that are proven to be clinically and economically effective. However, we believe that in practice it is unlikely that drug costs will be the key factor determining prescribing behaviour, when we are talking about generic drugs that in many cases will cost a few pence a day.
The framing of NICE’s clinical guidelines reflects the strength of the underpinning evidence. For example, where evidence strongly supports the use of intervention, NICE often states that that should be offered to patients. On the other hand, where the evidence of benefit is less strong, NICE typically states that intervention should merely be “considered”. It is entirely appropriate that the uptake of NICE’s recommendations reflects the strength of the evidence base. For the two drugs mentioned by my hon. Friend and me, NICE concluded that the evidence strongly supports their use for women at high risk of breast cancer, but was less strong for women at moderate risk. As such, its recommendations are worded differently, depending on a woman’s risk levels. Specifically, and importantly, NICE states that the drugs should be “offered” to women at high risk, and “considered” for women at moderate risk.
The Bill would require the Secretary of State to ask NICE to appraise certain new indications for off-patent drugs, whether licensed or unlicensed, rather than issue any form of guidance. Again, the Government believe that that is unnecessary, as there is currently no legislative barrier to Ministers asking NICE to appraise drugs outside their licensed indication. We tend to do so only exceptionally where there is clear evidence that that is the right course of action—an example would be drugs used to prevent transplant rejection in children. More frequently, NICE looks at the off-label use of drugs in the context of its clinical guidelines across the whole care pathway. Guidelines are generally considered a more appropriate vehicle for guidance on off-label indications, as they can set use more clearly in context. The question of mandated funding is unlikely to be critical if the drugs concerned are older or lower cost generics. NICE recognises the primacy of the medicines regulator in matters of safety and efficacy, and liaises with the MHRA in developing any clinical guidance recommendations relating to off-label use.
Let me explain why I am concerned that supporting the Bill could be counter-productive. That is not my hon. Friend’s purpose or intent, but it is a possible accidental side effect. The Government are concerned that the Bill could lead to clinicians and patients being concerned that something is not right about the use of a medicine outside its licensed indication, and that clinicians may be deterred from prescribing a drug, and patients from taking it. As I have explained, off-label prescribing is safe, legal, and when it is the right clinical choice for the patient, that is the right thing for the clinician caring for them to do. Given the large amount of such prescribing that goes on in the NHS every day, seeking to license every drug for every indication or each potential combination would be a gargantuan task. In many cases, the formal evidence base may not exist in a form that would support a licensing application.
Access to medicines that are important to patient care could be impeded because we worry that we would be seen to have set a new higher threshold for their use. That is precisely the opposite of what the Bill is seeking to achieve. We are, however, keen to take proportionate action to investigate whether non-legislative improvements can be made to support the use of appropriate medicines and benefit NHS patients. I was struck by the opinion and evidence that has been presented on access to medicines, such as the potential issues in transferring care from a specialist to a GP.
I might add that such issues are in no way unique to unlicensed medicines’ use. There are areas where there is far too much variation in the use of licensed NICE-appraised medicines. We are working hard with the NHS to address that, but there is no single magic bullet.
Volunteering Bill
Debate between George Freeman and Christopher Chope(13 years, 5 months ago)
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George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an eloquent point, which he started to make in connection with young people. Many of my constituents reach the volunteering stage of their life in retirement, at the end of a full working life. A number of them have contacted me to make this exact point about volunteering in retirement. They say, “Mr Freeman, I have built a business, had a family and lived in my community. Why should I be assumed to be a criminal? Could we not have a simple way for my bona fides to be established in a single certificate that applies to all my volunteering activities in the community?”
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. My Bill is designed to find such a simple solution. Clause 1 would establish a fit and proper person certificate. If an organisation or individual wanted to take on a volunteer, instead of having to get a criminal record check, they would be able to accept a declaration from the volunteer that they do not have a criminal record or any convictions. In the case of somebody under the age of 18, such a statement would have to be countersigned by a parent or guardian. Such a statement would, by definition, be up to date. A person could provide one this week to volunteer for reading in London and another next week to work with a diving company or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. People want to be able to get on with volunteering very quickly and with the minimum bureaucracy. Even if there are criminal record checks, what does that prove?
In the last week, there was the most horrific account in one of the national newspapers of a worker at a nursery who filmed the rape of a toddler and was involved in countless other ghastly offences. The nursery had been inspected by Ofsted some five weeks before the individual was arrested. The inspection concluded that the nursery offered a “safe and secure” environment for children, with
“appropriate recruiting and vetting procedures”
for staff. When challenged about what had happened, the spokesman for Ofsted said, I thought rather wisely:
“Inspection can only ever provide a snapshot of a nursery on the day of inspection.”
It can provide only a snapshot of what the inspector is shown or sees. The spokesman emphasised:
“It is the nursery’s responsibility to ensure it takes the necessary action to keep children safe and well looked after.”
My Bill would give that responsibility fairly and squarely to the people who recruit and supervise the volunteers.
George Freeman
Does my hon. Friend agree that in framing legislation to promote volunteering—I note that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), who is responsible for the big society, is on the Front Bench—it is important that we embody notions of trust and responsibility in the culture of the revolution that we seek to trigger? Otherwise we are in danger of legislating for distrust.
Mr Chope
The subject that we are discussing at the moment is the need for people to get a criminal record check before they can even have their application considered, and that is one of the biggest deterrents to volunteering. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has had the chance to read the text of my Bill, but my approach to Friday Bills has always been, as far as possible, to keep them simple. Like most of my Bills, this one is on one side of paper. It basically proposes the fit and proper person certificate as a substitute for a CRB check, which takes time—many weeks—and costs money. The price has gone up to £44, and somebody must pay for that.
George Freeman
I am very grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for this third opportunity to intervene correctly. I will not take my eyes off you, which is my gain and my hon. Friend’s loss.
Does my hon. Friend think that volunteers for schemes such as the community car schemes in my constituency—a number of elderly volunteers help out in their community through such a scheme—should be subject to the CRB checks to which they are currently subjected? A number of people in my constituency have contacted me to say that they have taken part in volunteering activity all their lives, and that they resent, at this late stage, being required to prove that they are not criminals. What does he make of that situation?
Mr Chope
I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. I must congratulate the Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on raising from 40p to 45p the allowance for volunteer drivers, and also on including the 5p per passenger addition, which means that someone can claim 50p per mile for taking one person to or from hospital and 55p per mile for taking two people. That is an important and useful initiative, but I am not sure—I hope the Minister will have a chance to respond to this point—that under the current law, such volunteers need a CRB check. It is absolute madness if they do.
Further and Higher Education (Access) Bill
Debate between George Freeman and Christopher Chope(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is very good at interpreting the words in the Bill, and that is obviously a factual situation. He will know from his constituents who apply to universities outside England that they are sometimes concerned whether they will be accepted purely on merit or whether, for example, a different set of criteria applies to students from Scotland compared with those from England applying to Scottish universities. I recognise that that is a potentially contentious matter, and I thought it would be better to limit the scope of the Bill in the way that I have.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
As vice-chairman of the all-party group on universities, I hope to speak a little later.
Does my hon. Friend feel that a higher, philosophical question that should be uppermost in our consideration of the Bill is the importance of underpinning the freedom of our universities? It seems to me that they are crucibles of free inquiry, free speech and the freedoms that we as a society cherish. Although I recognise the intent behind his Bill, I worry about any Bill that places more burdens on our universities. Does he agree that the principle of freedom should be sacrosanct?
Mr Chope
Absolutely, and my Bill is designed to promote the freedom of universities to decide the issues in question for themselves and to restrict the Government’s ability to interfere in the governance of our universities, many of which are international institutions of high repute. They are expanding and raising their standards in the global higher education context, and they are highly respected. They do not need an interfering Government, who are pledged to reduce regulation, increasing the regulatory burden on them. However, that, of course, is exactly what the Government’s current policy seems to be.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend the Minister is great with quotes, and I notice that the shadow Minister does not wish to respond to that one yet—he will have the chance to do so later.
Let us not think that the universities are doing nothing. They are trying to encourage people to apply and are engaging in outreach initiatives. The Russell group alone is investing £75 million a year in initiatives designed to help the least advantaged students to win places at university, which is quite a lot of money.
George Freeman
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that information. Does not the fact that the universities, whose only interest is in academic excellence, find it necessary to make such investment, tell us everything we need to know about the lack of need to regulate them further?
George Freeman
I am sorry; I did not make myself clear. I meant regulating universities further through my hon. Friend’s Bill, which would further complicate the matter and require them to be guided by the words in the Bill. If it became law, it would place on them a duty to choose only on the basis of merit, as he has defined it. Can we not just trust them to work with the Government? Does not the fact that they already invest such sums in outreach give us all the reassurance we need that they believe that it is important and that therefore it must be?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is trying to attack my Bill as a regulatory measure, when in fact it is a deregulatory measure. It aims to prevent the burden that the Government are trying to place on universities in a less than transparent way—using the Office for Fair Access—and which is increasing regulation on universities. That would be prevented by the Bill, because it would be at odds with the duty to allocate places on merit other than in accordance with the exemptions set out in clause 3. He stands four-square with me in saying that we want to reduce the burden on these universities. However, at the moment the burden is being increased by the Government under their measures to try to bring about social engineering in a rather partisan way.
Mr Chope
I do not know whether my right hon. Friend has read today’s press reports about the London School of Economics and one of its erstwhile postgraduate students from Libya. I am not sure whether his remarks would apply to that particular happening. If a university chooses to have a closed scholarship arrangement, as some do, there is no reason why that should not continue under the Bill, provided that it is set out transparently. Ultimately—this is why the desire for ever more Government regulation is ill conceived—why can we not trust those universities to do what is best for them in the great marketplace? No self-respecting institution wants a reputation, to use my right hon. Friend’s example, for taking on a lot of thickos who will not perform at university, because that will push the university down the league tables, and will affect its ability to attract research grants and the brightest and the best. The Government cannot second-guess all those decisions—they have to be made by universities or other higher education institutions themselves.
George Freeman
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way yet again. Everyone in the House will agree that the educating of thickos, rich or otherwise, is not the role of our universities. However, does he believe that an important role for universities is to develop leadership? In that education sector, are we not sometimes in danger of over-emphasising purely academic criteria? Would we want clause 3 to be used by universities to encourage a wider definition of leadership in society? That is something that our universities have always done, and it is not purely academic.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. My view is that we should allow universities to do that if they want to, and clause 3 would enable them to do so, and would give them that freedom. The debate centres on the overt desire by the coalition Government for more bright students from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to the top universities. It is likely, however, that the consequences of the access arrangements that they are seeking to impose will be counter-productive and certainly discriminatory.
Someone said to me the other day that merit is almost the last taboo in terms of discrimination; that we have outlawed discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, gender and all the rest, but we still allow discrimination on the ground of merit, and the Government are really keen to do away with discrimination on the ground of merit. The Bill is designed to ensure that that does not happen, and that the Government’s arrangements for access to further and higher education will not be allowed to be at the expense of merit.