Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I came in earlier today to listen to the Minister respond to the Question asked by my noble friend Lord Dubs on child obesity. I was pleased with what the Government announced in July—I thought it was a step forward—but then I was disappointed when I heard that Public Health England was to be dismembered. I had hoped that when the Minister responded earlier today he would have given a more positive response than he did. I was disappointed to hear that he was simply going out on consultation again to see what would follow and who would supervise the implementation of the policy. It is this kind of change of direction when we are making progress that disturbs people. That is why there have been so many criticisms made of what is happening in this area.

The Bill is needed; we are out of Europe, we need regulation and we are dealing with a technological, fast-changing world. The Minister, in presenting his case, talked about the difficulties we face in handling AI and with biotechnology, how we stay abreast of it and keep pace with it. He went on to give the example of mobile phones: how life has changed so dramatically in such a short space of time and how we have also run into difficulties. He spoke of how, having run into difficulties, the Government have learned that we need to have proper regulation of what is happening with online matters, particularly those relating to children and harm. They are now moving on that, but it has taken some years to get to that point. The Minister said that he was in a listening mood and asked how we should deal with these complex changes. Well, we try to learn from history. The history there is that we should have had a regulator in place earlier. We would then have avoided many of the problems that we currently have.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, has come up with a range of recommendations in her warmly welcomed report that are so deserved by people who have suffered as a consequence of medical devices and treatment in the past in a way that they should never have suffered. So I suggest to the Minister that he answer the question himself. We need confidence in dealing with this; I am not going to deal with the technicalities relating to the report, particularly the regulatory report that many others here are well able to dissect and determine what is needed in terms of the law. In general political terms, the Government need to add something that will give people confidence in this piece of legislation. If the Minister is in a listening mood, he will have heard from almost every speaker that the Cumberlege report must be addressed. I ask him to answer one simple question, as there is a limit to the number of recommendations that the Government would be prepared to embrace. Is he prepared to think again about the possibility of having a patient safety commissioner to go along with this piece of legislation? If he were willing to take that step, it would be a big move in the direction that so many people in this Chamber want.