Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency

Simon Opher Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have quite a lot to say here, but I shall squeeze it into four minutes.

First of all, having a regulator funded by a drug company is genuinely a case of marking one’s own homework, and we need to change that straightaway. I think we need a reform there.

From clinical experience, I would also say that the yellow card system does work, but that we never get any feedback from it. That is one of the problems. The other problem is that clinically one is often not sure whether or not something is an adverse effect. We need a very easy system that can just be fired off. The right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) mentioned low white blood cells, for example, and whether that was a reaction. Then, when a number of different doctors get it, we can accumulate that information.

If I may, I want to say a few things about vaccinations. Vaccinations save far, far more lives than they cause damage. Every medicine that has ever been invented has side effects and I do not deny vaccine side effects. However, the vaccine saved hundreds of thousands of lives. I ran the covid vaccination service in our area in Dursley. At the height of the pandemic, if we injected 180 people over 80, we saved a life—that is incredible. Compared to that, the side effect rate was incredibly small. It does exist and we need to look at it, but let us not get on the backs of vaccines. Vaccines have saved more lives than anything else.

I really want to talk about antidepressants, on which the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) has already said a few words. We have a problem with over-prescribing in this country. Some 8.7 million people are on antidepressants. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) spoke about Paroxetine causing increased risks of suicide. We need to wean ourselves off medications. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines say that for mild to moderate depression we should not start tablets, yet they are started. That is because people have become a bit over-medicalised, we have 10-minute appointments and no psychological therapies. We must also make use of social prescriptions, available to the NHS, where we can prescribe to patients something that is not medical. We need to de-medicalise what is going on. That can include lots of different things, such as exercise and being very creative. In fact, yesterday I went with the Lord Mayor of Westminster and Lu Jackson to St John’s Wood library for a Comedy-on-Prescription event. Making people laugh can avoid the need for medication. We need to look at those things much more seriously and get people off tablets.

The right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) said that one of her constituents took their own life when they were trying to get off antidepressant medication. The MHRA needs to put warnings on the packet, but it has failed to do so. We also need a support mechanism for people coming off tablets. Of the 8 million people on antidepressants, about 2 million are trying to get off them, so it is a major problem. GPs, actually, are not that well informed about this. There are some very strong Maudsley guidelines based around micro-tapering, so that people can come off slowly and safely. Some kind of support service might have helped her constituent and stopped them taking their own life.

In conclusion, we have a pandemic of over-prescription and we need to start looking at that. As chair of the beyond pills all-party parliamentary group, with the hon. Member for East Wiltshire we are trying to reduce prescriptions and make it safe for people to come off antidepressants.