European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between George Freeman and Steve Baker

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Last year, as Minister for Life Sciences, I voted for the EU referendum on the basis that I would be bound by the result. Despite watching over many years with a heaviness of heart the growing failure of the EU to create an entrepreneurial economy, on balance I felt that we were better off staying in to fight for a reformed, 21st-century EU. As Life Sciences Minister responsible for a £250 billion sector, I felt that I had to speak for its interests. So I campaigned, along with many colleagues, for remain, not in a bullying way but in an open way.

I actively offered my constituents a choice by inviting my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and my friend the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) to my constituency to put their side of the debate. We held the debate, and I lost it. Our constituents voted to leave the European Union. My constituents voted, and the country voted, in one of the biggest acts of democracy we have seen for centuries.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said, we are not delegates. As Edmund Burke said, we are not sent here to be slaves to our constituents. I believe that the one thing that parliamentarians should never give away is the sovereignty vested in us by the people we serve. The truth is that successive Parliaments in recent decades have done that, not least in the Maastricht and the Lisbon treaties, fuelling public anger and disillusionment and the sense of unaccountable political elites giving away powers that were never theirs in the first place. That is why I believe we were right to give the people their say and we are right—all of us—to recognise the importance of that vote and the anger that was expressed.

[Mr Baker]

Since my hon. Friend mentions our debate, I hope that he will not mind my saying that he fought the fight with great nobility and grace, and he was eloquent at all times. If only both sides of the campaign—I do mean both sides—had conducted themselves as he did, the referendum campaign would have been far happier.

[George Freeman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that gracious intervention. Having won sovereignty back for this House, we must use it. We must show that the House is worthy of that sovereignty and capable of acting in the interests of all the people we serve. Churchill said once:

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

In the referendum campaign, we all stood up and spoke passionately for our respective sides, but now is the time for us to do the other courageous thing and listen to the will of the British people.

We have to make Brexit work for the 48% as well as the 52%, for London as well as the north, for white-collar as well as blue-collar workers and for Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. We need to deliver not a soft or a hard Brexit but a British Brexit, which allows us to respect our European neighbours, to be a good neighbour and, as the Prime Minister made clear in her recent speech, to be an active European ally and collaborator—outside the political institutions of the EU, but members of a European community of nations and neighbours.

In my view, proper democrats cannot and must not say, “Oh, the Brexit vote was illegitimate. Brexit voters were ignorant. They weren’t qualified.” How condescending! Do we say that when they vote Labour, or when they vote UKIP? No. We all of us accept such results, and so we should now. Although the referendum was, in my opinion, a low point in British political discourse—let us remember that it included the appalling murder of one of our colleagues by a deranged neo-Nazi—the core underlying mandate of the British people was crystal clear. To the extent that it was not crystal clear, it is our job as elected democrats in our debates in this House to bring to the vote the crystal clarity that it needs.

All we are now doing is giving the Prime Minister and her Government the authority to start the negotiation of the terms on which we will leave the European Union. In many ways, the real debate will come not this afternoon, but when we discuss the terms of the negotiation in the House during the next two years and, ultimately, the package that she brings back to us.

Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill

Debate between George Freeman and Steve Baker

Friday 16th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

I made the point earlier that the barriers to access of innovation are much broader than the fear of litigation, and I am happy to reinforce that.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

The Minister will know that in the treatment of wet AMD Lucentis costs £700 an injection and Avastin £60. Does he think the Bill could help clinicians use Avastin to treat wet AMD, thereby saving the NHS, I understand, some £84 million?

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend is quick to leap on to a very important point. The answer is no, because in law we have an important provision to protect people who invest billions of pounds in developing new innovations. Clinicians are free to use alternative off-label drugs where there is evidence they work, but not on the basis of cost. We have a presumption in law that where a drug is licensed or on patent for a particular indagation, which is the protection for the company that has invested to bring the drug to market, we allow an alternative to be used only where there is clinical evidence, not on cost grounds. The price falls dramatically when drugs come off patent and the generics industry picks them up. There is price protection for a short period of patent life to create the incentive for people to make the extraordinary investments up front. We then get the benefit of cheap drugs through the generics sector.

[Mr Baker]

The Minister raises a critical point. I am concerned that cost grounds do matter and that some people might be going without early treatment for wet AMD, because they cannot, for a range of reasons, access Avastin. My concern is that people might be going untreated for wet AMD at a point when the relevant drug, Avastin, might help them more than Lucentis at a later stage.