Draft Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency Trading Fund (Amendment) Order 2016

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 General Committees

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

There is a concern about the operation of the MHRA. The organisation has not been regarded as the ideal body to carry out its functions because it is funded almost entirely by the people it is meant to regulate—the pharmaceutical industry.

There have been serious criticisms concerning the authorisation of a drug called Seroxat, an antidepressant that was found to cause or increase suicides among people who took it in its earliest days. When the MHRA went to investigate, it set up a committee and had to close it down six months later because a majority of its members were employed by the pharmaceutical industry, so the restriction on the use of Seroxat was delayed for a long time.

The main criticism of the organisation is that it is set up to police itself. In other countries, principally Italy, Governments have set up fully independent, free-standing bodies operated by a levy on the pharmaceutical industry, but not controlled by the industry. The MHRA had a chairman who was previously employed by GlaxoSmithKline for many years. Is the Minister happy that this measure is not an extension of that body policing itself and having an interest that is predominantly private and commercial, rather than that of the general public?