Human Medicines (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I was going to make an esoteric and wide-ranging speech on the relationship between the protocol, the MHRA and the European Medicines Agency and wow the gathered hundreds of online Peers in order to demonstrate my technical knowledge, but I have abandoned that in favour of saying something very brief on the relationship between these regulations and the Bill to which the Minister has already referred, and on today’s announcement about the purchase of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

I genuinely congratulate the Minister—he must have had nightmares over the last eight months of Questions and Statements on PPE, test and trace, and everything else—on actually managing to find the time to be entirely on top of, and extremely impressive in, the process of taking through the somewhat delayed legislation on medical devices. I also congratulate him on his willingness to be flexible. It is easier to be flexible with one’s own side, but I actually am impressed that he, on behalf of the Government, has been able to respond so effectively to the superb campaign of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, in relation to the protections that we debated in Grand Committee. I know that my noble friend on the Front Bench has done a sterling job in supporting and working on that.

I want to test out this afternoon—in relation to what we are debating, because it is directly related to it, although it will be the subject of a Statement tomorrow—the extraordinary misunderstandings that appear to exist not just on the twittersphere, which you would expect because the very word “Twitter” brings that to mind, but in social media and the broadcast media as well. These relate to the relationship between the MHRA and the European Medicines Agency, and the relationship between what is possible now and what might change following the final conclusion of whatever deal is done at the end of the transition period in respect of our exit from the European Union at the end of December.

Perhaps the Minister—and this is a kind of run-out for tomorrow, seeing as there are so few of us gathered together—could confirm that the MHRA has powers, and has used them already when we were, and remain in the transition period, members of the European Union, in circumstances where it was appropriate to act swiftly when the European Medicines Agency was taking a longer period of time to come to a judgment on the efficacy of a particular procedure or vaccine. Regulation 137, I think, relates to this. Would it not be nice if we could join the German ambassador in welcoming international collaboration, rather than always having to believe that when we borrow someone else’s horse we should get commended for riding it in in front of the others? I am very supportive of what has been done; I believe that the MHRA has done its job thoroughly and efficaciously. It is excellent that we have been able to move quickly, not least because we might be able to transport the vaccine during December, before whatever chaos exists from 1 January. It is a great move forward; we should all celebrate it, but we should do so within the context of the reality of the situation, the knowledge of what existed already, the relationship of continuity after 1 January and the celebration of international collaboration to tackle the virus which, after all, is a pandemic.