Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between James Davies and Martyn Day

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

Q I want to return to the medical supplies issue, if only because this is perhaps the more controversial aspect of the Bill. I met with Coloplast yesterday evening. It is concerned about the potential impact of the control of prices and information disclosure requirements on investors. To what extent do you think that investment is at risk as a result of the provisions of the Bill? Further to that, you have suggested that all medical supplies, or reference to them, should be removed from the Bill. Failing that, what reassurances would you like to see, bearing in mind that there are already information-gathering powers in the 2006 Act?

Philip Kennedy: Yes, of course those have not necessarily been enforced or used in practice. Coloplast is a large US multinational. It is active, but it is not actually a member of the Association of British Healthcare Industries, I believe. I could understand its anxiety that a more bureaucratic system that could cut prices or onerous data collection over a long period would frighten investors off. Anything that does that in our sector would not be welcome. However, I think it is less onerous for the larger companies, which would have more substantial resources to crunch data and produce the type of information that Mr Smith has talked about being readily available. That is not really our concern. Our concern would be for the smaller businesses, which simply do not do this, and about the disproportionate impact on them. However, I take the concern that Coloplast and other US multinationals, which have invested heavily in the UK life industry, the life science sector, over the years, would have in seeing this legislation as not attractive to them as investors.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

Q The Scottish Government have used payments from the PPRS towards a specific fund for access to new medicines. Does the panel think that a similar model would be good elsewhere in the UK?

Dr Ridge: From an NHS England point of view, the ring-fencing of moneys to support medicines, which I guess is what you are referring to, is not a position we have previously supported. We largely want to retain the position whereby NHS England and clinical commissioning groups are able to determine their own priorities, in terms of how available funding or savings are used. That is where we are on that. Priorities vary, as you know, from locality to locality and the ability to utilise moneys in a way determined locally strikes me, and strikes NHS England, as being the way to go.