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Department of Health

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. There should be more ongoing studies to establish what happens after a drug enters the marketplace, and to determine which drugs are being used. Over the past two weeks, the Health Committee has been looking into expenditure levels in the national health service. The Secretary of State and various civil servants have given evidence to the Committee, and we discovered that we often do not know which families of drugs are being prescribed. We need that information to determine certain interactions, perhaps with public health promotion or with people getting assistance in the acute sector. We need to determine whether any great changes have taken place in the level of use of certain families of drugs over the years. We need a big national picture of the use of those drugs in society, because this relates to the money that we, as taxpayers, spend—and the taxpayers’ money that the Department of Health spends—to try to improve the nation’s health. I do not know whether there are any simple correlations in this regard, but when we were taking evidence the other week, we felt that we ought to be able to get an answer to that question.