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Department of Health

We all hope so. Like many, I thought that having a rational and genuinely independent body to look at these matters was a fine reform. The difficulty is the pressure that we all feel as human beings. If a member of our family or a close constituent wanted a drug, we would go along with it, even if there was only a 1 per cent. chance of success, and would want to hurry NICE along. But if we as politicians take a decision, as we should, we should look at what happens with rushed approvals. The reason that Seroxat caused problems was that it was approved off-label for people under 18 when it had not been trialled. As I said earlier, a fairly recent report, published since the Health Committee report, said that we withdrew 24 drugs in the long period between 1971 and 1992, while the United States withdrew only nine. We had approved all those 15 other drugs, which did a great deal of damage, when America had refused to approved them. A balance must be made—this is often impossible—when patients who suffer from terminal diseases demand drugs that might have even a very slim chance of postponing the inevitable. They want us to approve those drugs, and we politicians tend to put pressure on NICE to give quick decisions. The evidence is that that the faster the licensing process works, the more frequent the problems and a greater number of lethal reactions take place. If we continue to accelerate our review times, there will be more adverse reactions. That is a difficult case to put across, and it is perhaps almost impossible for us, as politicians, to do so when we see someone sitting in our surgeries telling us that they have a fatal disease and want a drug that might be available in France or Wales, but not elsewhere. Dr. Blumsohn spent a year requesting to see the full data on which the work that was published under his name was based. He was one of two lead authors. Two years after raising his concern, he was suspended from his university post. In The Observer last Sunday, Proctor and Gamble is reported as saying that it is ““standard industry practice”” not to hand over all data to professionals. That seems extraordinary, and it is regrettable that the Government have failed to respond in any way to that crucial issue in their response to the report. That is the key issue turned up by the Health Committee. No reforms are proposed for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, although it has been criticised in debate after debate in the House because of its nature, organisation and funding. That was another main concern that the Government left untouched in their response. The MHRA is still 100 per cent. funded by the industry and the system relies on self-regulation. There is talk of reviews every four years, but a thorough, independent review was not agreed to. We have seen the pathetically weak response from the ABPI, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy). An early-day motion was tabled last night—it has amassed one signature so far—and I tried generously to amend it to point out that there was presumably some support for the ABPI in praising its new code. As the hon. Lady rightly said, the code of practice has been described as weak by the BMJ and by the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin. She rightly made the point that the ABPI has never expelled a member. It has never even forced one of them to publish any corrective statement, although there are dozens of examples of misleading advertising and products that should not have been marketed as they were. We are dealing with a defensive group, lobbying for and defending the industry and putting at the top of its priorities not the concerns and health of the public, but the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry.