Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Luke Evans and Jim Shannon

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who has made me feel rather nostalgic. Listening to her speech gave me a flashback to when I used to go to Grand Ronde and hear someone speak so eminently plausibly in many a debate of which I had very little understanding.

Let me make this declaration now: I am a simple GP. When I entered the House, I always said that I would speak about the coalface and what really affected me at that point, and that is why I felt that I needed to speak about the Bill today. I welcome it because I approve of the emphasis on the creation of a world-leading research-driven, standards-based clinical care framework that can drive the UK forward, but two aspects have struck me in particular. The first is prescribing, and the second is trials and tests.

Members on both sides of the House have broadly welcomed the provision for new prescribers, and the flexibility for that within the framework. As the workforce and the demand grow and as the roles change, that new prescription will be necessary. I agree about the importance of ensuring that those prescribers have the necessary due diligence, training and registration, which, after all, will provide the safeguards and the accountability that are needed when it comes to writing a prescription. However, I think that the Bill has missed the issue of prescription waste, or waste medication. On numerous home visits doctors see piles of unused medication, and that does not apply only to their patients: there is a crossover in hospitals and, of course, in care homes. Some of it is purely coincidental as people are taken into hospital or from hospital into a care home, but there is a huge amount of it, and, anecdotally, doctors see it all the time. I have seen patients hand in up to 100 boxes of, say, warfarin, and that cannot be right.

When I consulted the House of Commons Library, it came up with a figure of £300 million a year in losses from 2011 on the basis of only one study. That suggests to me that, over a decade, it is hard to find sufficient information. Last week I spoke in the debate on the Environment Bill, one of whose first principles is that any other legislation should consider environmental impacts. I think that this Bill would do well to take account of prescription waste, which it could do that in a couple of ways.

Pharmacies and, indeed, any dispensers could be asked to legally collect the statistics on returns. That would allow us to see how big the problem actually is, and allow us to create solutions. It might sound strange for someone who has worked in the workforce and had lots of paperwork to be suggesting more paperwork, but at least if we open up the statistics, I am confident that my medical colleagues would look at them and see a way to resolve this.

I would also argue that we should review the charitable donation of medications. I freely admit that there are issues over their storage and over how to check the safety of this practice. However, the problem is not insurmountable if the medications are returned in their original state. If the Government do not address the matter in this Bill, I suggest that they might want to consider it going forward. We could, however, consider a more severe statutory obligation on pharmacies, care homes and dispensers to be far more vigorous in the way in which they dispense their medications and follow up, particularly for repeat prescriptions. Things such as emollients, moisturisers and day-to-day painkillers often pile up and end up on repeat prescriptions, and it is quite hard to monitor them. As someone who has written hundreds of prescriptions in a day, I know that it is very easy to sign them off rather than check them, and if there is no obligation for me to check whether the patient actually needs the medication, who does that responsibility fall to? It is arguably the patient, but if that is not happening, and if there is as much waste as we think there is, I suggest that the Government might want to consider that issue.

[Jim Shannon]

I recognise the fact that the hon. Gentleman is a GP. I declare an interest, in that I am a type 2 diabetic. At my surgery, my doctors and those who are in charge check my prescription every time to make sure that I am not over-ordering or getting more than I should be getting. Some GPs are doing that already and thereby controlling what medications people get.

[Dr Evans]

Absolutely, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is exactly what a GP should be doing. However, when a GP is dealing with hundreds of requests for repeat prescriptions, it is unlikely that they will have time to phone every single one of those patients to say, “Is this what you need? Have you already got it?” That has been the role of clinical pharmacists, particularly in relation to people who have multiple prescriptions for four, five or six medications, at the time of their medication review, which I entirely agree with. A GP will indeed look at a medication review, but when someone asks for a repeat prescription, they usually do it either electronically or by making a simple mark or cross on a piece of paper that they take to the GP surgery. It is unlikely, if the prescription has already been set for six or 12 months, that there would be a review of the prescription each month. That is the whole idea of having an annual review. In the old days, people could be on medications for months, if not years, without ever being checked. The reason for doing that was convenience. If a patient had to come in to see their GP every month to justify why they wanted their medication when their condition, say diabetes, was stable, that system would not be sustainable, given the current pressures on the NHS.

My second point relates to trials and tests. For me, another element that is missing from the Bill is a duty of care. I would like to give an example of a patient who came to see me who had had her genome sequenced. She came in with a report, and she said, “Dr Evans, I have been told I have a 50% chance of having cardiovascular issues and an 80% chance of having Parkinson’s disease. Please can you help me out?” That was very difficult to deal with. First, there is as yet very little we can do to influence Parkinson’s. Secondly, at that point I had had no training on counselling someone who had had genomic testing. The cardiovascular side was easier: we know some remits, and we can make a difference with cholesterol, exercise and lifestyle advice. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, and as the tests become more advanced and more people have them, I would like to see emphasis being put on ensuring that those doing the tests have a duty of care to ensure that there is follow-up and comeback for the person who has the test.