European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Kakkar and Lord Warner

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on his amendment. As we have heard, the proposed revision to the clinical trials directive, the agreed clinical trials regulation, is vital. Despite many positive aspects of the directive, which was applied in the United Kingdom in 2004, it is regrettable that our contribution to clinical trials globally in the period from 2000 to 2010 diminished from 6% of all patients who went into clinical trials in 2000 to just 1.4% in 2010. That was why clinical researchers from not only the United Kingdom but throughout the European Union came together to undertake a thorough revision which resulted in the 2014 clinical trials regulation.

The regulation is quite complicated. It has two attendant regulations: one, 2017/556, deals with the regimen that will be applied to inspection of clinical trials in the European Union after the regulation comes into force; the other, 2017/1569, deals with the manufacturing standards that need to be applied to interventional products that are being assessed in clinical trials. Those two regulations also need to be considered along with the 2014 regulation.

The real concern, from looking at information available about the regulation, is that for non-member states of the European Union, there is an obligation to continue to apply the 2004 clinical trials directive, also recognising elements of the new regulations once they come into force across the European Union. How do Her Majesty’s Government intend to deal with the broader issue? The amendment is designed to ensure that once the regulation is fully adopted across the European Union in late 2019, so it will be applied in the United Kingdom. There are other considerations about being a non-member of the European Union with regard to what is stated about the standards that need to be applied to clinical trials. What approach do Her Majesty’s Government propose to take there?

It seems counterintuitive that, as things stand, if no action is taken, our country will be left with a clinical trials directive that was considered throughout the European Union to be in need of revision. That revision has been undertaken in such a way that it will make the performance of clinical trials more effective, efficient and responsive to the different nature of trials being undertaken and provide an appropriate level of bureaucratic intervention for individual trials to ensure the protection of patients. It would seem completely wrong, having led the revision of the clinical trials regulation, for our country to be left behind with a directive on its statute book that continued to make clinical research more difficult.

These are vital matters, because often when designing a clinical trial there is a long lag period. One takes one or two years beforehand to develop a protocol, identify participating sites and determine what regulatory framework the trial is to be conducted under. Therefore, early reassurance in these matters is critical. A failure to provide that early reassurance may lead for some years to a diminution of the contribution that our country can make to clinical research. As we have heard, that would be detrimental to our entire life sciences industry.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, as a former pharmaceutical and life sciences Minister, I rise to support the modest amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Patel. I have done my time in the salt mines of trying to streamline the processes for undertaking clinical trials in this country. Despite what the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said, it was not just the 2004 directive that caused problems for clinical trials in this country; it was sometimes the sheer bureaucracy of securing agreement to undertaking them, which has contributed to the departure of clinical trials and sometimes investment by big pharma in this country. It is all very convenient at present in some quarters to lay the blame at the door of the EU, but there are historical facts that support a more balanced view of the 2004 clinical trials directive.

From my experience, I know how critical it is for securing a flourishing pharmaceutical and life sciences industry in the UK, and the investment and jobs that that brings. For a decade or so, we have struggled to maintain the level of clinical trials undertaken in this country, and the pharmaceutical industry’s investment in the UK has been dropping. A number of people have made that point time and again in this House in debates with the Government on this issue. The new EU clinical trials regulation will have an incredible impact on the system for conducting clinical trials across Europe with its new single data portal. That point has been made very clearly by the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Kakkar. We have to be a part of this future development if we are to protect our position on clinical trials and life sciences inward investment. That is why it is so important to have an amendment of this kind in the Bill.

I do not think it is fair to say that the Prime Minister’s speech of a fortnight ago is sufficient guarantee that everything will be all right on the night. We have had a number of those speeches on a number of subjects, which tend to show that it will not necessarily be all right on the night. The show may go on but UK participation in the show may be sadly absent in some areas that are critical to this country, as this particular sector of industry is. That is why we have to look a little more carefully at what sort of guarantees we want and that the spirit and meaning of the noble Lord’s amendment is guaranteed in the future.

I do not think we can just rest on ministerial assurances. It has been a convention in this House—I have been in it for nearly 20 years—that we accept ministerial assurances. However, on Brexit, ministerial assurances, while well-intentioned, are not always good enough to ensure that British interests will be guaranteed after we have left the European Union. That is why we need more than simply ministerial assurances. I would like to hear the Minister’s explanations of what the Government’s policies are and what they will do. I for one want to see an amendment of this kind to the Bill before it leaves this House. This issue is too important for a major sector of our economy. It is one of life’s great ironies that we, who have been a moving force in improving clinical trials with proposals for such trials in the EU could, by one of the strange fates of history, be unable to benefit from those improvements if we are not very careful. I hope the Minister will give us an explanation, but it will need just a bit more than warm words to give us guarantees on this issue before the Bill leaves this House.