Breast Cancer Drugs

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing the debate. Like other hon. Members, I am here today to represent my constituents’ concerns. I should say from the off that I join the cause to make Kadcyla more available.

When my staff and I were discussing the correspondence about the debate and particular constituency cases, we quickly agreed that this is the worst sort of correspondence that we receive—when people are terminally ill but unable to access the medicines that they need. The subject is particularly acute—I do not think that I am the first Member to struggle to keep a quaver out of my voice—because my mother-in-law died of secondary cancer. These things will stay with us all. None of us can know what ladies who are currently suffering from these diseases are going through, but when we have seen it at second hand, we all want to live in a world where the NHS does not have to practise any rationing.

I want to focus on that point because, as the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) said, the problem is intractable. I know about some of the great difficulties in bringing forward Abiraterone to help men, in a similar set of circumstances, suffering from prostate cancer. In a sense, I sympathise with the Minister and with NICE because they have an extremely difficult task. While it is easy for all of us to say that of course Kadcyla should be freely available to all those who need it without restriction, I am well aware that the problem is long-standing and applies to many innovative pharmaceuticals.

I also appreciate that it is no comfort whatever to sufferers of various cancers to know that a profit-making pharmaceutical system has a far better record of innovation than the alternative planned systems. I wish the Minister every success in her crucial task of working out how to ensure that innovative medicines come forward at a lower cost and a greater rate.

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[Martyn Day]

I do indeed join my hon. Friend in those comments.

A new and ambitious Scottish cancer strategy, launched in 2016, aims to stop anyone dying from breast cancer by 2050, and breast cancer is of course a priority in the Scottish Government’s Detect Cancer Early initiative. We need to do many things to move forward in that direction.

No debate seems complete these days without reference to Brexit, and this issue is no exception. The Health Secretary has stated that the UK will not be in the European Medicines Agency. If so, there could be implications for the way in which medicines are regulated, and marketing authorisations will be required from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency for the UK. I am in no doubt that the implications will be less efficiency and possibly longer processes for obtaining authorisations, resulting—I fear—in innovative drugs taking longer to reach patients. Some industry leaders predict delays in the region of 150 days, based on the examples of Switzerland and Canada.

According to a piece that appeared last year in the Financial Times, when Sir Michael Rawlins, chair of the MHRA, was asked whether it would be able to take on all the extra work registering new drugs and medical devices currently carried out by the EMA, he said, “Certainly not”. It seems that considerable investment and recruitment will be required to re-establish it as a stand-alone national regulator. I am keen to hear from the Minister how delayed drug access for UK patients will be avoided.

[Mr Baker]

I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and of course he raises a perfectly reasonable concern, but the campaign director of Vote Leave had, as one of his particular bugbears, the costs associated with the clinical trials directive and its prejudicial effect on innovation in medicines. I hope that the Government can find a better way through than the previous system and that, in leaving the EU, we will not only solve the problem of the EMA but have a better regulatory system afterwards.

[Martyn Day]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I look forward to hearing the outcome.

In conclusion, with regards to Kadcyla, I hope the company’s resubmission to the Scottish Medicines Consortium is at a fair price to allow it to be considered for approval for use in the NHS in Scotland. It would give people across Scotland the opportunity to benefit from more treatment options and could give them precious extra time with their families and loved ones. The Scottish Government, the SMC and the NHS have worked hard to reform access to new medicines, but we now need pharmaceutical companies to do their bit by bringing forward much fairer prices for new medicines, so that access is as wide as possible for the people of Scotland. Cost-effectiveness is a key marker in ensuring that drugs are routinely available in the NHS, and I take the opportunity to emphasise that point to the pharmaceutical industry in general.