Health (CSR)

Debate between Paul Flynn and Frank Dobson

Thursday 11th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) and my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) on their very illuminating speeches.

I will not follow the lines that my right hon. and hon. Friends have taken. However, I note that the comprehensive spending review has been described as generous by some. If we want to see a generous settlement in next year’s spending, it is the settlement that has been given to the landowners and farmers of the country, especially when one recalls that the price of wheat has gone up by 47% and the price of lamb has gone up even more. Not only will the £3 billion that was given out in handouts to the farming industry be protected but it will probably be increased by 3%. Now, there is generosity from a Government.

When one considers what is behind this CSR, one is filled with a sense of despair; we have a new Government with new myths and new jargon, and we will have new errors too. An example of a piece of new jargon is that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is about to be emasculated and replaced by something called “value-based pricing”. It sounds attractive, but we know that it will not work because the pharmaceutical industry supports it and the pharmaceutical industry has a long record over the years of demonstrating that the only thing that it supports is increased prices and an increased share of the cake for itself. That is what has gone on.

At least with NICE, we had a modicum of control over the increases in the price of pharmaceutical products and the increasing share that the pharmaceutical industry had of the NHS; a share that the industry took away for itself, consequently depriving other parts of the NHS.

We know of examples of that practice by the pharmaceutical industry, mostly involving anti-cancer drugs. One drug was promoted as an answer to pancreatic cancer. One of my constituents was very much involved in this field, and I did some research myself to find out exactly what that drug offered. As far as The Sun, the Daily Mail and all the other tabloids were concerned, this was a miracle drug that had to be obtained for patients and it was only the “mean” Government who were not allowing patients to obtain it. Having gone into the details of what this drug achieved, I found that it cost £16,000 a year and that it increased life expectancy by 12 days, but it caused side effects in 10% of the patients who used it, including death. The other side effects were so dreadful and destroyed patients’ dignity to such an extent that their 12 days of extra life were of no value and would possibly even have been an increased burden to themselves and their loved ones. As is the case with many other drugs now, however, that drug was being pushed by the pharmaceutical company and its agents.

If we take away the power of NICE to make objective, scientific judgments, we will have the power of the tabloids and the lobbyists replacing it, and the patients associations will all join in behind them. We will have campaigns to persuade us; we will have patients on the television making appeals, patients who will be good-looking and who will arouse our sympathy. The pressure will then be on to alter the priorities of the health service to accord with the demands of the pharmaceutical industry. This is a surrender from a reliance on objective, science-based judgments to a reliance on the prejudice-rich decisions of the tabloid press and “big pharma”. Will the Minister guarantee that the price of drugs will go down?

[Frank Dobson]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the 150 drugs that are most commonly prescribed in this country are half the price that they are in the United States, where the pharmaceutical industry, roughly speaking, determines the price of drugs? We can guarantee that prices will start to go up under the new system.

[Mr Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a very interesting debate to be had on those issues, but the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has been in the House a long time, and the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who has just intervened, has been Secretary of State for Health and both are aware that, while the subject may be interesting, it is not to do with the comprehensive spending review, which is the title of the debate.