Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 24th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

Flights between the UK and the EU will continue whatever the outcome of our EU exit. We are working with airports to ensure that freight can continue to flow and that any disruption to passengers is kept to a minimum. Aviation security in the UK will remain among the best in the world and passengers will not notice any change to airport security screening at UK airports as a result of EU exit.

[Dr Whitford]

Maintenance, repair and overhaul of aircraft is a major and growing industry at Prestwick airport in my constituency. With the Prime Minister’s preferred Brexit deal just one week away, what has already been put in place to provide the engineering licences and aircraft safety certificates currently provided by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The first obvious point is that if the hon. Lady voted for the deal, we would go into the revised political declaration, which commits both the parties to uphold high safety and security standards and make arrangements to maintain close co-operation between the CAA and EASA. However, the Commission has already published proposals to extend its contingency measures for aviation until October 2020, were we to leave without a deal.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

22. What recent steps he has taken to prevent the UK from leaving the EU without a deal.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

As the Prime Minister said on Tuesday, the only ways to rule out no deal are to revoke article 50, which we will not do, or for Parliament to vote for a deal. We are working to achieve legally binding changes on the backstop, and we have set out commitments to protect workers’ rights and the environment and to an enhanced role for Parliament in the next phase of negotiations. We are determined to address the wider concerns of those who voted to leave. We all know that the House needs to support a withdrawal agreement, and we are working hard to deliver that.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

There are a whole host of reasons. First, we want to get a deal over the line. May I just remind the hon. Gentleman what the House voted for, or against, yesterday? It voted against an SNP amendment by a majority of 36. Interestingly, were one to take that result literally, that now means that there is a majority of 36 in this House for keeping no deal on the table.

[Dr Whitford]

The Department’s own report shows that almost a third of the Government’s essential no-deal projects will not be ready for 29 March. The Minister will not say how the Government will vote on 12 March, but if the House votes against no deal, will that be respected?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I am fairly hopeful that the vote on 12 March will be carried by the House because it is the one for the deal.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

T7. I welcome the fact that EU citizens will no longer have to pay a fee to obtain settled status, but they will still have to make an application, which implies that some may be refused, as has happened already with citizenship. After the shame of the Windrush scandal, does the Minister not think that EU citizens should be guaranteed the right to stay in their own homes?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I humbly suggest to the hon. Lady that that is what UK nationals across Europe, in just about every EU state, do when they reside there. We have offered a very generous package—more generous than that which the EU is currently offering in return regarding citizens’ rights.

Leaving the EU: No Deal

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Chris Heaton-Harris

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The best way to rule out a no deal is to vote for the deal we have on the table.

Extensive work to prepare for this has been under way for over two years. It was commenced by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) when he was in my role.

[Dr Whitford]

I have to say that the Minister was quite cheeky to me, on 6 December, in telling me to google the French Government’s plans. Will he take the opportunity now to reassure the president and the deputy president of the Royal College of Radiologists, and indeed radiologists, cancer specialists and their patients up and down the UK on the provision of a safe supply of medical radioisotopes, which simply cannot be stockpiled?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I apologise to her if I was cheeky on that particular day, but I understood that she would not believe a Minister of the Crown at this Dispatch Box when articulating what is going to happen to mitigate any problems with flow on the French side of the short straits.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

T6. As the Secretary of State for stockpiling, can he explain to me how he will maintain a supply of the medical radioisotope technetium, given that its precursor has a half-life of less than three days?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I trust the hon. Lady is not trying to scare any vulnerable constituents we might have. I know she does not necessarily trust what a Minister might say, but all she needs to do is look at what other countries are doing to guarantee that the flow of all medical supply continues across borders, by googling what might be going on at the French border, to see that her concerns are unwarranted.

Access To Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Chris Heaton-Harris

Friday 29th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I just thought I would check about amendment 13, Mr Deputy Speaker. This whole experience has been a steep learning curve when it comes to procedure in the House. Perhaps we have invented a few things on the side as well, given how we have gone about our business here. I do not want to speak too soon, but if we could conduct all our health debates in the positive and constructive tone that has characterised these debates and the process behind the Bill, we might improve our heath service in leaps and bounds, rather than getting caught up in unnecessary politics. But that is where we are.

My amendments 1, 2 and 3 would remove, among other provisions, two clauses on clinical negligence. I want to talk about the reasons for their removal and the original idea behind the clauses. As right. hon. and hon. Members who have been following the progress of my Bill will know, many of the ideas in it came from Lord Saatchi’s Medical Innovation Bill in another place. Those ideas have not had the smoothest of journeys in this place. I have been regularly reminded by hon. Members—I thank those here today—and others outside this place that these clauses have not enjoyed the support of stakeholders.

Such concerns have been around since before the Bill was even drafted. Unfortunately, the echoes of those concerns haunted the first mention of the word “innovation” in the clause, and I decided from conversations I have had that those concerns could not be quelled in time. Throughout the process, I was clear that I wanted to listen to everybody with something to say on this matter. I have met and read the briefings of everyone who has contacted me wishing to share their views, and I hope it has been evident that I have been up front, honest and very clear about my intentions. I tried to solve the concerns of Members and the medical community who believed the clause would have negative and unintended consequences. That is why I tabled these amendments.

I hope that this process reflects favourably on Parliament and shows how a piece of possible legislation can evolve with a huge amount of stakeholder engagement and with parliamentary opinion taken on board. Since the beginning, I have focused on the sharing of good practice and transparency—and, indeed, on the failures of treatments through a database. Those ideas are reflected in clause 2 and have received much support.

I wanted to maintain the camaraderie built up around the Bill and have been unable to find the support I needed for the more controversial clauses, 3 and 4. Clause 3 sets out the steps that a doctor would need to take to show that he or she had acted responsibly using the Bill. They were intended to reflect the steps that a responsible doctor could be expected to take under common law when innovating. In relation to a proposed treatment, clause 3 would require the innovating doctor to

“obtain the views of…appropriately qualified doctors”

with

“appropriate expertise and experience in dealing with patients with the condition in question.”

Clause 4 expressly preserves the common-law Bolam test, the key precedent for judging whether a doctor has acted negligently.

The two clauses received strong opposition, which I will not go into too much. However, I worked closely with many officials from the Department of Health, and I want to thank them, because I had read the briefings that were so adamant in saying how dangerous parts of the Bill would be, so it was nice to have some of the best and brightest legal and parliamentary counsel remind me again and again that they viewed them as perfectly safe and did not see them as a danger to patients.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Does the hon. Gentleman understand the danger of undermining our clinical trials systems, in that, using the Bill, a doctor would have to convince only one colleague before they could go ahead and try something completely new? The recent tragedy of the patient who died while taking part in a phase 1 trial shows the need for steps and procedures to reduce the risk.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The hon. Lady knows that I would obviously have preferred to retain clauses 3 and 4, but I have to agree with her: the body of opinion stands on her side of the argument, not mine, so the simple answer is yes.

I remind the House, though, that there was a decent and honourable purpose behind clauses 3 and 4. Dr John Hickey, the former head of a primary care trust, contacted me to say that,

“as a registered medical practitioner, a former NHS Trust Chairman and with 30 years’ experience in the field of legal medicine with the Medical Protection Society (last five years as Chief Executive), I believe I am adequately qualified to comment on your Bill.”

He went on to say:

“Over the last 30 years I have seen how doctors have increasingly practised defensive medicine…because of the fear of litigation and disciplinary action by their regulators; this defensiveness is not in patients’ best interests.”

In fact, it may interest Members to hear that, in reading the debates on the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) and the recent debate on the Mesothelioma (Amendment) Bill, I have seen much stated that supports the action I wanted to take in clauses 3 and 4 to reassure doctors who fear litigation. For example, the British Medical Association’s parliamentary brief for the Second Reading of the Off-patent Drugs Bill stated that there were

“two barriers to the use of off-patent drugs in a new indication: 1) Clinicians’ confidence in prescribing: clinicians take on a personal and professional liability if they prescribe an off-patent drug in a new indication”,

and therefore they require reassurance. The brief goes on:

“GMC guidance also indicated a greater level of responsibility for the doctor prescribing off-label and therefore potential greater risk of liability which would be a disincentive for a doctor prescribing off-label drugs”.

That is a simple statement of the purpose of clauses 3 and 4: to give doctors a supplementary way to assure themselves that they are doing the right thing where they might want to do something they believe to be in their patients’ best interests, in a fully evidenced, responsible and honest way.

Similarly, the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s brief on the same subject states:

“Guidance from the General Medical Council is clear that a doctor takes on an extra level of personal liability when prescribing off-label, which would be a significant disincentive to prescribing”.

Breast Cancer Now says that, because of personal liability,

“doctors can be unwilling to prescribe drugs for new purposes, even where…clinical evidence is strong”.

As Lord Freyberg stated in the mesothelioma debate in the other place,

“The fastest way to save lives is to see if the drugs for common cancers work on the rarer ones as well, given the shared mechanism of disease across cancer. This is off-label research and until we fix the issue of liability, as advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, we will continue to send thousands, like my sister, to an early grave.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 November 2015; Vol. 767, c. 407.]

There was therefore plenty of reason and evidence to support clauses 3 and 4, but I guess politics is all about being pragmatic, and I believe that the provisions that we have already discussed are worthy in themselves of inclusion in a sensible Bill, because they will do some positive things. It is therefore with some reluctance, as I am sure the House will understand, that I have decided to table these amendments, which strike the elements relating to clinical negligence from my Bill.

Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Chris Heaton-Harris

Friday 29th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Yes, but in responding to amendments 8 and 9, which were tabled by Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, I know that, when the Secretary of State and the Minister choose to use the power conferred on them in the Bill, they will confer far and wide on how the database is set up and used. Perhaps my hon. Friend will have an opportunity at that time to put her point in the consultation on how wide and extensive the database should be.

I mentioned Emma’s story because it was about evidence sharing within our existing system, which every single Member would like. Of Emma’s treatment, the NHS stated that it could not find evidence to approve the effectiveness of the operation that saved Emma’s life, and then withdrew funding for it. However, in its consultation on the matter, the NHS did not talk to the surgeons at the hospital where Emma was treated. There is a general point. I could tell hundreds if not thousands of stories in which a simple flow of information and data, or innovation or other things in our NHS, could improve the quality and type of care that is given to patients.

Amendment 15—the Minister’s amendment—states:

“References in section 2 to medical treatment include references to treatment carried out for the purposes of medical research (but nothing in section 2 is to be read as affecting the regulation of medical research)”.

That is an important amendment because it signals the Government’s intention to use the database wisely when it comes to dealing with research. Research has come on in leaps and bounds, meaning that a huge number of new treatments are coming into our NHS through clinical trials and innovative ideas everywhere in the system.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Although people who work in an academic unit will be very aware of trials—a lot of trials are UK-wide, but European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer trials are Europe-wide and occasionally there are worldwide trials—people who work in district general hospitals, where there might be greater numbers of certain types of patients, are often less aware. Adding a listing of trials under any disease topic or area of clinical practice could be helpful in attracting clinicians to say, “I am aware that you can access a trial in Birmingham or Manchester.” The measure might promote trials to the busy clinician who is not directly involved in academic research.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Lady, and I completely concur. I can foresee great benefits for those in the outer reaches of the NHS who do not necessarily come across information about many of the trials that are taking place. One of the biggest criticisms of the original formulation of my Bill was the fear in connection with getting people on to clinical trials. I would like to think that we have not just overcome that issue, with the amendments we are discussing and the latest version of the Bill, but have gone some way along the line to help improve the ability of registered medical practitioners to have knowledge of such trials. I completely concur with the hon. Lady’s point. We have innovation everywhere, so there is a real purpose behind having a database, regardless of whether the Minister has had the ability to set one up before now.

On research, Lord Winston made a very important point particularly well in the other place on Second Reading of the Mesothelioma Bill. He stated:

“There is no question that in the field of treatment there is a great deal of research.”

He had a list of a number of chemotherapeutic agents that were being looked at, saying:

“In recent years I can count at least 10 or 11”.

He then went on to name them. They are impossible for me to pronounce, so I will not do so here today. He said that,

“there are various combinations of those therapies with other well-known mitotoxic agents. These have included trials”.

He went on to say:

“Other treatments have been researched: of course there is surgery…and there are now attempts to try to reduce the tumour inside the lung membranes.”

He spoke about three trials that Cancer Research UK is conducting to emphasise the wide range of “stuff”, as he put it, that is going on.

“One is some work with HSV1716, which is a virus that acts against dividing cancer cells. It comes from the herpes virus…a very good example of where we might make a breakthrough in treatment. Then there is a different strand of research with ADI-PEG 20, which in combination with other drugs such as cisplatin affects a particular amino acid in the chain of cell division”—

which could prevent cancer cells from multiplying.

“That has been specifically targeted for the treatment of mesothelioma. A compound, GSK3052230, developed by GSK, is I think about to enter phase 3 trials very shortly. That attacks the FGFR1 gene, and therefore stops cancer cells growing.”

This is where he makes the point exactly:

“There is now an increasing emphasis on understanding that, if we are going to improve outcomes for patients with a variety of different cancers, and other chronic long-term conditions, we need to move away from a generalised approach to managing disease towards personalised, precision medicine”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 November 2015; Vol. 767, c. 395-7.]

Medicine is going to change. Research is going to change. Spreading the information about that across our NHS, and how quickly we can do that and learn from success and failure in our NHS, is a very, very important matter.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I truly believe that personalised medicine will become a reality. I would like to think that a database would aid the spread of knowledge about how individual medicines are being used and who they might affect in different ways, so yes, I nearly completely agree with my hon. Friend.

[Dr Whitford]

I have two small points. First, personalised medicine, particularly for breast cancer, has been evolving for years. Right from when we could tell whether a cancer fed on the female hormone oestrogen or not, we were targeting the treatments towards patients. We have been moving that way and it will accelerate.

I know it is not the subject of the Bill, but I hope that the accelerated access review will consider in general how we get drugs to patients—a subject that we debate relentlessly in Westminster Hall. I see a negative feedback loop coming from among colleagues who used to be trialists, such as myself. We registered patients and did all the work to take part in research, but when the drugs were finally made available, the NHS could not afford them. We need a totally different way of accessing those drugs. The companies want to sell them, and we and patients want them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire, who will give a much more informed answer.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

I think the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has a much greater admiration for what a computer on a desk can access at that moment when a GP has a 10-minute appointment. What they are actually looking at is the patient’s records. They also have the ability to prescribe, but to track something down they would have to shut those systems down and go into something else, as with searching the internet. They cannot do that live, in front of a patient, and that brings up an important point. If the new system is meant to be used live, in front of patients, it will have to interact with the NHS computer systems, which someone can literally click on and use to look things up relatively easily, in the way we look things up in the BNF at the moment.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Lady for her explanation to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart).

It is important that doctors are aware of the changing methods by which care is being delivered. Innovation in the delivery of care must be recognised in the tapestry that is our wonderful national health service. I fully welcome the Minister’s amendment to my Bill. It makes it more worth while. The improvements we are making to the Bill today are dramatic, but they have not come out of thin air; they have come from a great deal of work. A great deal of thought has gone into them, which I very much appreciate.

Finally, and briefly, let me turn to amendments 8 and 9, in the name of the right hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander).