Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Friday 27th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Saatchi on introducing this important Bill. The Bill is about innovation, but one of its benefits would be to enable dying patients to obtain potentially life-saving treatment even if that treatment had not been fully investigated. I have been lobbied by those against the Bill with arguments varying from lengthy legal discourses to comments such as, “The medical treatment may not have the support of a responsible body of medical opinion”. My reaction to much of this has been much the same as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner.

Of course it is desirable and important to have thorough investigation of innovative medical treatment, but if someone is dying they are not interested in whether a possible life-saving treatment has the support of responsible medical opinion. The patient is interested in survival; after all, the alternative is terminal. Many impressive and technical arguments have been put forward today, but where the simple point is “Experiment or die”, there is really only one option.

It is possible, as has been claimed, to innovate under the law as it exists today but, as has been pointed out, we live in a litigious society. Ambulance-chasing lawyers are lurking around every corner, searching for new opportunities. The law as it stands does not do enough for a doctor who wishes to administer an innovative treatment that may give the last chance of a cure to a dying patient; indeed, there is a bias towards no action. The Bill will help to remove doubt about a doctor’s ability to act in what he and his patient believe to be the patient’s best interest. It would be far better for a doctor’s energy and concerns to be focused on the patient’s health rather than worrying about their own position if he or she were to take innovative steps to save a patient’s life. There should not be a bias against the ability to give a potentially life-saving treatment to save a dying patient.