Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

I support Amendments 1 and 6 —the latter because I speak as someone who has spent much of his life studying innovation. I recognise that the backdrop to this Bill is the massive acceleration of innovation in some core areas of medicine, so the point is to try to bridge the gap between that and the time taken to test medicines. However, I will comment especially on Amendment 1, even though I cannot hope to match the rhetorical power of my noble friend Lord Winston.

I have stressed several times in the debate the crucial importance of looking for possible unintended or even perverse consequences that the Bill could have. Amendment 1 is very worth while for this reason. It would certainly be a perverse outcome of the Bill if it had the effect of inhibiting or slowing down emergency measures where they need to be taken, and I hope therefore that the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, might be prepared to accept both the amendments, which seem to me to add strength to the Bill.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, as far as Amendment 1 is concerned, I think that the later amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Saatchi has the same effect. Amendment 1 is very clear on the matter, and I think that it has been the law that emergency treatments are dealt with in a way that is suitable for the emergency. Accordingly, something of this sort in the Bill is an improvement.

I find Amendment 6 more difficult. As I said in Committee, “innovation” is an ordinary word in the English language, so to try to list all possible innovations seems to suggest a foreknowledge of what innovations may be introduced in the future. It requires unnecessary precision. As I said, “innovation” is a reasonably simple word and it is easy for a practitioner to carry it in their head. I venture to think that Amendment 6 would be somewhat more difficult to carry in your head. I have read it, of course, but I would find it quite difficult to repeat it now without reading it, so I will not attempt that test.

On the later amendments, it seems to me that emergency medicine is certainly not intended to be dealt with by the Bill. It is obviously intended to deal with a deliberate decision to administer a treatment into which has gone a degree of consultation and prior thought. I am therefore entirely of the view that innovation ought not to be covered by it. In so far as my noble friend Lord Saatchi’s amendment does not do that already, Amendment 1 is very acceptable so far as I am concerned.