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Health Service Branded Medicines (Control of Prices and Supply of Information) Regulations 2008

My Lords, having listened to the Minister’s reply, I am particularly glad that I tabled this Motion. It has, as I had hoped, given her an opportunity to place a number of assurances on the record. However, I find it a little surprising that it has taken a debate to do that. I can tell her that, until she rose to her feet and said what she did, there was huge puzzlement in the pharmaceutical sector about the Government’s real intentions and plans. I am sure that it will be a source of some reassurance to the sector to hear that the Government intend to lay an amending regulation, which the sector has asked for; that there is no intention to introduce reference pricing as it is commonly understood; and that the matter of new active substances will be appropriately dealt with and defined. The Minister will appreciate that the language used in the statutory instrument and the Explanatory Memorandum is important. How these things are expressed sends out a message. I hope that she and her colleagues will be cognisant of that. I still retain considerable misgivings about the Government’s approach. There seems to be no apparent logic or sense in introducing an arbitrary price cut across the board. Many medicines have already been deemed cost effective by either the Scottish Medicines Consortium or NICE. I am not clear why the Government feel that they are justified in imposing a price cut upon those medicines. As we have said, the statutory instrument is a formal statement of government policy. It is now only a matter of time before the rest of the world takes a lead from what is happening in this country and the way we do things. Confidence around the globe is of great importance. As the CBI sectoral survey showed in March this year, the whole PPRS renegotiation, which has now gone on for many months, is doing considerable damage to the reputation of the UK as a pro-innovation country. I hope that in the weeks ahead that we have available, the Government will reassure not only the domestic industry but the international community of their long-term, benign intentions. I think it is fair to say that up to now the industry has believed that this statutory instrument has been laid as a device by which the Government wish to strong-arm the industry into accepting the voluntary scheme; in other words, the position is so unpalatable that the industry will feel obliged to sign up to the voluntary scheme, even though at the moment it does not know fully what that scheme will consist of. I hope that those impressions can be dispelled. However, it would be helpful if the Minister could cover a point relating to the reporting requirements, which I do not think we have covered hitherto. Why have the reporting requirements for companies been made so much more onerous? Can she reassure me as regards reinstating quarterly reporting, which those companies with which I have talked have indicated has worked perfectly well? As she will know, the pharmaceutical sector in general has been assiduous and diligent in fulfilling its requirements in that regard. It is a mystery to me why the Government think that more frequent reporting is required.