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Health and Social Care Bill

I give warm support to the amendment. About 35 years ago, when I was dean of the medical school in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, I chaired a committee established to appoint a professor of clinical pharmacology. We appointed someone who was at that time the youngest professor ever appointed in the medical faculty in Newcastle—Professor Michael Rawlins. Sir Michael, as he now is, has become the distinguished chairman of NICE, and that organisation has done a wonderful job over many years in defining the cost-effectiveness of medicines and other forms of intervention in the practice of medicine. The problem has been that, although the guidance that it has produced has been extraordinarily clear, very competent and based on solid evidence, that guidance has not, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, made clear, been implemented widely across the country. This is not an absolutely restrictive amendment. It would be subject to Clause 2(3), which states: "““In performing its functions the Commission must have regard to””—" and here Amendment No. 21 would add— "““the need to provide equity of access to medicines and other therapeutic treatments through the consistent application of guidance and technology appraisals produced by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence””." I cannot see any way in which the Government could conceivably object to this helpful amendment. If implemented, it would, in general, help with the removal of the postcode lottery; it would assist the uptake of new medicines; it would encourage innovation; it would define the new commission’s competence in respect of NICE and external review groups; it would ensure uniformity and consistency across the country of the implementation of NICE guidance; it would help to define clearly the status of NICE guidance including technology appraisals; it would, I hope, ensure that some elements of the NICE clinical guidance were made mandatory; and it would broaden NICE’s remit to incorporate carer costs, social care services, worker productivity gains and other wider benefits and costs. These would be the major advantages of the implementation of this group of amendments, which I warmly support.