Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

3rd reading (Minutes of Proceedings): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, there are two sets of amendments within this grouping. The first comprises small amendments relating to the circumstances in which the Government would be required to provide producers with an information notice. The second relates to the arrangements required for implementation of the legislation in Northern Ireland.

I turn, first, to Amendments 1 and 2. Amendment 1 clarifies that an information notice is required in respect of the costs incurred by a company in connection with the manufacturing, distribution or supply of a particular UK health service product. Amendment 2 is a technical drafting change to further clarify the intent of this clause and the type of transaction being contemplated.

On Report, I tabled amendments to the information requirements that would necessitate the Government issuing an information notice if they wanted UK producers to provide certain cost and profit information. This was in response to reasonable concerns raised by several noble Lords that attributing costs and profits to individual products, as opposed to simple aggregate-level data, would be burdensome for companies. The amendments that I have brought forward today reinforce these information notice procedures by clarifying that they apply to cost and profit information relating to individual products but not to aggregate-level data across a portfolio of products supplied by a company to the health service.

As I explained on Report, we already collect cost, sales and profit information on an annual basis under our voluntary scheme, the PPRS. This information is supplied at an aggregate level across a range of branded medicines supplied by a company to the health service. Clearly we need to be able to continue to collect these data in a routine way in order to maintain the voluntary scheme, and indeed to collect a similar type of routine aggregate-level company information in any future statutory scheme.

These amendments enable us to continue with the current approach to collecting company-level data in a non-bureaucratic way while, critically, ensuring that the information notice procedure, which was a concern of noble Lords, is focused on the area which we know is the greatest burden to companies—providing cost information on a product-by-product basis. I am pleased to say that my officials have discussed these amendments with the ABPI, the trade body for the pharmaceutical industry, which is content that they address industry concerns.

I now turn to Amendments 3, 4, 5 and 6. As noble Lords know, most of the Bill extends to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with some elements extending only to England and Wales or only to Scotland. A legislative consent Motion is required from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the matters in the Bill that are devolved.

I am bringing forward these technical amendments to address the fact that the Northern Ireland Assembly was not able to complete the passage of its legislative consent Motion on the Bill before it dissolved, although significant progress had been made, with the relevant committee having given approval. Our amendments therefore seek to change the Bill to enable the Northern Ireland components to be commenced separately through regulations. These components of the Bill will be commenced only after legislative consent has been secured.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I do not propose to detain the House. I merely wish to thank my noble friend the Minister for the further clarification that Amendments 1 and 2, in particular, give to Clause 9.

I was among those who raised a concern. Although the industry completely understood that in order to make the PPRS effective there was a requirement for a scheme for the acquisition of data in aggregate, as my noble friend described, the powers would have enabled there to be a lot of demands for information which went beyond what had previously been required and which had the potential to be very intrusive. Under those circumstances, an information notice system, with proper details supplied to companies and with a potential appeal right, was required. We discussed that and I am very grateful to the Minister for taking it on board and putting in place something which I think will give considerable reassurance to the industry that the scheme will not be as burdensome as it could have been.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches are also happy to support the amendments. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I have no intention of detaining the House with long-winded thanks. However, I want to voice my recognition that the Minister, in his new role, has both understood and responded to the issues raised on the Opposition and Cross Benches about the shortcomings of the Bill, which had been through the House of Commons without anybody noticing or trying to amend its unintended consequences, rather like the Article 50 Bill that we debated in this House on Monday and Tuesday.