Human Medicines (Amendment) Regulations

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and Daniel Zeichner

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. He is quite right to raise those concerns about patients with epilepsy, which I will touch on in the course of my remarks, echoing the point that he made with great eloquence.

These changes represent an extraordinary power grab. Ministers should have brought them to the House for proper scrutiny, and then, of course, they should have gone out for proper consultation with patients, patient groups and health stakeholder. That is why the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges stated that it is

“inexplicable and unacceptable that an issue of this importance is not the subject of wide consultation and that medical royal colleges as doctors’ professional bodies were not specifically engaged in the process.”

The British Medical Association said that it

“should have far more time to adequately consider the Government’s proposals for change.”

That is why we have brought this prayer motion and why I am pleased that we have the opportunity to debate these proposals today.

It is worth saying a word about the context in which we debate these proposals. Notwithstanding the confusion on the Government Benches about when we actually do exit the European Union—the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) has given us no greater guidance today in his remarks at the Dispatch Box—it is worth recalling that, as The Lancet said only last month, Brexit, especially a no-deal Brexit, will affect the healthcare workforce, NHS financing, the availability of medicines and vaccines, the sharing of information and medical research.

Our effective joint working with our European partners has been vital for the NHS over recent years, in everything from infectious disease control to the licensing, sale and regulation of medicines. Developing new medicines depends on the international co-operation that is fundamental to accessing clinical trials. Patients in the UK are currently able to access EU-wide trials for new treatments, and the UK has the highest number of phase 1 clinical trials across the EU.

Thanks to the strength of our pharmaceutical base, every month, 45 million packs of medicine move from the UK to the EU, with 37 million packs going from the EU to the UK. We know that 99% of the insulin used in the United Kingdom is not manufactured in the UK. Current EU legislation allows for the legitimate trading of medicines quickly and swiftly cross-border, but the cost of no deal could see pharmaceutical products subject to 44 separate checks and controls at the borders, hugely delaying access to medicines.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some very important points. I wonder whether he has seen the advice from the UK BioIndustry Association, which knows what is going in the life sciences sector and says:

“Despite the expertise and efforts of the MHRA…with 12 days …until Brexit, being prepared for a ‘no deal’ is an impossible task”.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I thank my hon. Friend. As the Member of Parliament for Cambridge, he works very closely with the life sciences and pharmaceuticals industries and is a great champion for them. He is quite right to raise those concerns—although it is not clear if we are leaving in 12 days because, as I said, the Minister at the Dispatch Box earlier was pretty hopeless in giving the House any clarity on that matter. I suppose we will have to wait for further statements from the Government tomorrow, unless the Health Minister wants to clarify matters for us in a moment.

One of the issues that the organisation my hon. Friend mentioned is concerned about is the parallel trade in medicines, where pharmaceutical exporters seeking to profit from currency fluctuations could see medicines intended to meet UK patient requirements being quickly distributed out to the EU because of the advantage that a fall in sterling, perhaps, could accrue to them in those circumstances. This is why we have seen widespread concerns about medicine shortages in the event of no deal.