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Department of Health

The hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) has strong views on these issues. He and I have discussed them on various occasions, and we are joint officers of a group that is particularly interested in such matters. I am not sure how widely the hon. Gentleman’s views are shared in the House. He may prove to be a Churchillian figure and eventually his views will be shared by a majority of us. As a member of the Select Committee, I am grateful for his support of our views. The inquiry into the influence of the pharmaceutical industry was the idea of David Hinchliffe, our excellent former Chairman. I am sure that his successor, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) will prove equally excellent. It is a shame that David Hinchliffe, who retired at a relatively early age at the last election, is not with us this afternoon. He was keen to hold the inquiry, a highlight of which was our visit to Australia. I warn the House that I shall shortly be submitting a photograph taken on that trip to the caption competition in TheHouse Magazine. I was not in the photograph, which shows a number of my colleagues who look like Snow White and the seven dwarfs. I hope that the winner of the caption competition will invite me to enjoy a glass of whisky. As the hon. Member for Newport, West said, unfortunately only two members of the Select Committee responsible for the report are in the Chamber today. That is no discourtesy to the House. One of the members who participated in the inquiry, Patsy Calton, tragically died at an early age. As several other such members were regrettably defeated at the last election—I say that genuinely—the membership of the Committee changed. The report is excellent. Following on from a point made by the hon. Member for Newport, West, may I say to the Minister that we are just a little disappointed that in contrast to many responses to the report, the Government seem to have said no to more of our recommendations than is usual? I would appreciate hearing from the Minister why the Government were so firm. I now part company with the hon. Member for Newport, West because there is a danger that this is a debate in which we will want to have our cake and eat it at the same time. After hon. Members have heard my speech, they might say, ““Hang on, that is exactly what the hon. Member for Southend, West has just done.”” The United Kingdom owes a great debt of gratitude to the pharmaceutical industry for its funding of significant amounts of medical research and the consequent reductions in cost to the national health service. There is an argument that the regulatory burden on developing new medicines has increased markedly over the past two decades and that the balance between risk and benefit has been tipped a little too far in favour of the former. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is an important body, and my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) has referred to it several times today. However, our report said that the recent cut to its budget might have a significant impact on the speed at which new medicines reach patients. The Government’s recent moves to extend the prescribing power of nurses and pharmacists, which many of us welcome, might render it more difficult to restrain the growing influence of the pharmaceutical industry and the increase in the medicalisation of our society. I hope that I will not regret making this statement, although it will please the hon. Member for Newport, West, but there is a view in certain quarters that we can sometimes be seen as a nation of hypochondriacs. We all know about those who are really ill and perhaps never even go to a GP, while other people always think that they are dying, although they invariably live to be 100 or more. All the new products on the market to make us look more wonderful and feel better pressurise people to think, ““It’s out there; let’s have it.”” However, as the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) said, that is perhaps due to accountants and advertisers, rather than scientists, who do such wonderful work. There was a theme throughout the Health Committee’s inquiry that highlighted the increased medicalisation of our society. Every malfunction in the human body can now be diagnosed as a defect and some sort of medication is available to treat it. It is thus no surprise that self-medication is on the increase and that GPs are put under more pressure by their patients. People can now access websites on which they can find out about whatever their problems are. I was interested by what was said about pancreatic cancer because many of us deal with constituents who come along and say, ““My loved one is in dire straits. Here’s this product; what can you do to try to make it available?”” It is difficult to deal with such a situation. The phenomenon is symptomatic of the pharmaceutical industry. It can be argued that the industry has been left to its own devices for too long. That was the thrust of the Health Committee report. The industry can target not only general practitioners, hospitals, treatment groups, medical journals and professional bodies in distribution campaigns but individuals as well. The Health Committee thought that that practice put genuinely ill and vulnerable people at risk to some extent. Everyone, including patients and consumers, should be protected from pharmaceutical companies’ persuasive product pushing. As a Conservative, I am certainly not in favour of the nanny state, but a balance must be struck and there is a role for Government, which is why we are genuinely disappointed that more of our recommendations were not accepted. The powers of the statutory regulator—the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency—should be strengthened to ensure that the evidence produced by pharmaceutical companies truly reflects the findings of their clinical trials. That research should be undertaken in a professional manner, and the disadvantages as well as the benefits of licensed drugs should be well known to people who prescribe and use them. I welcome the revised and updated Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry code of practice, which was announced on 16 November. It will govern the UK-based pharmaceutical industry’s relations with health care professionals from January next year. It highlights the key priority of patient safety, and sets guidelines and restrictions on pharmaceutical companies’ advertising strategies. It bans promotional competitions, including one cited in the Library briefing. In September 2005, a dentistry magazine featured a promotion for the drug Periostat that included a competition to win an iPod Mini. I have not entered the competition, but I am tempted to encourage my children to do so, as they all want iPods for Christmas. Responsibility for ethical practices should not lie with the pharmaceutical industry alone. The Health Committee strongly recommended that doctors should be obliged to declare significant sums of money or gifts that they receive as hospitality, and that they should register them with their professional bodies. The profession will say that only a tiny minority is involved but, even so, we believe that those gifts should be registered. Likewise, the ABPI code tightens the rules on hospitality, stating that delegates to company sponsored events, as we have heard, should only be flown economy class. However, it does not go as far as banning provision for five-star hotel accommodation, which is a shame. The ABPI says:"““There are rigorous guidelines for conducting clinical trials and a code of practice governing all promotional activities.””" Despite those assertions, a number of practices have emerged that are clearly against the public interest, including the suppression of negative clinical trial findings resulting in a body of evidence that does not allow a transparent view of a product’s risk-benefit ratio. That is especially important, as guidance such as that produced by NICE is based on such published evidence.