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Department of Health

That is my experience as well. I declared that I am a lay member of the General Medical Council, the regulatory body for doctors. I was at the GMC on Tuesday on Euston road and had an exchange of letters with the chief executive about this debate. I was not able to have a long discussion with him, but he wrote to me on the recommendation to keep a register of members’ interests, for want of a better expression. There are about 230,000 doctors registered with the GMC and we think that about 130,000 have an active role. Many have retired but remain on the register, as that was a big part of their professional career and they would like to keep their names on the register. The chief executive, Finlay Scott, said that the GMC as a regulatory body—unlike the Royal College of Nursing, which is a membership association, or trade union, for want of a better expression, without the GMC’s statute—lays down conditions under which doctors have to work. The publication ““Good Medical Practice””—often described as the doctors’ bible—clearly states what doctors should and should not be doing. The chief executive reiterated the section to me:"““You must act in your patients’ best interests when making referrals and providing or arranging treatment or care. So you must not ask for or accept any inducement, gift or hospitality, which may affect or be seen to affect your judgment. You should not offer such inducements to colleagues.””" If doctors breach those rules, they go before a fitness to practice committee, with the likelihood of action being taken against them—they could even be struck off the medical register—but that has not happened during my six years’ experience of serving on the GMC. The new ABPI code of conduct has been mentioned. The ABPI is a trade organisation that works well with the Government, but it is not a statutory body and therefore cannot issue statutory codes. Given all that is said about Members of Parliament enjoying BA upgrades, kettles calling pots black come into mind, so I shall move on from that because a lot has been said about patient safety and drug efficacy that does not hold water. I shall briefly deal with what the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) said about the PPRS. Paragraphs 113 to 120 of the report explain in reasonable detail what the PPRS does. That is the most transparent translation of the PPRS that I have seen in over a decade of being involved in one way or another in the House with the pharmaceutical industry. We have gone about as far as we can go with the PPRS. If we were to make it totally transparent, the companies would be looking over their shoulders asking why one of them receives more on one scale and less on another than the others. The PPRS is not the most transparent scheme and it is not a statutory one. The Government and the industry sit down together, and they have recently reached another decision that will benefit the NHS, inasmuch as they agreed that more money will come from it. I am not tempted by the suggestion to take a further look at the PPRS that was made by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. I may have to be tempted by members of the Committee if they decide that we should take a further look at it. However, making the scheme more transparent would probably destroy something that no one argues is detrimental to their case. I have spent a decade visiting pharmaceutical companies and having dialogue with them, and I have never yet met anyone with any weight in the pharmaceutical industry debate who says that we should get rid of the PPRS.