---

Thalidomide Survivors

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome for the statement. I entirely agree that the campaigners on the NAC and the work of the Thalidomide Trust deserve our strongest support and thanks. He is right that the Medicines Act 1968 is an important legacy from a real trauma visited on a number of families. He is also right that this underlines the importance of the proper testing of drugs, including animal testing. I understand that one of the problems was that although some animal testing of thalidomide was done, it was not done on pregnant animals and, as a result, some of the evidence base was lacking. It is, thus, important that we now have a much better and more effective approach and that we continue to develop it into a better system of ensuring that we do not have another visitation of this sort of tragedy on families in the future. The work and research that will be done will not, in a sense, be research into the individual thalidomiders; it will examine whether health adaptions can prevent the development of conditions that might develop if those adaptions were not put in place. It will have some wider relevance, but there is a uniqueness about the thalidomiders' situation that we should not underestimate. On the funding, no other budgets for patients or other NHS research facilities will be cut as a result of this measure—we are using central budgets. This is not without cost, because £20 million is a lot of money and it might well have gone on other things, but it is important that this has taken place and we believe that an important priority for the NHS is ensuring that thalidomiders have the opportunity of as healthy a future as possible.