Orkambi

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Bill Wiggin

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

As some of my colleagues will know, I have a 14-year-old niece with cystic fibrosis, as well as many constituents who have it. I obviously know people within the community, too. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in 2017 Vertex earned £2.5 billion from the sale of Orkambi and the chief exec was paid more than $17 million? I think that the Department of Health and Social Care probably has to go some way towards meeting Vertex on this, but it seems to me that there is an awful lot of money sloshing around and both sides are in a position where they could compromise.

[Bill Wiggin]

First, let me say how sorry I am to hear about the hon. Lady’s niece. We should take this very seriously. The figures that I have are even worse than the ones that she has laid out.

The price remains inaccessibly high, and this is entirely due to the powerful patent laws that allow pharmaceutical companies to monopolise drug production. Vertex expects to retain monopoly intellectual property protection on its cystic fibrosis drugs well into the 2030s. Analysts conservatively estimate that it will generate profits of $13 billion on Orkambi and another related drug, Kalydeco, alone. This could be used to fund further research and development—to reward its shareholders for its brilliant breakthrough and perhaps to encourage it to do more. But no, Vertex has spent $500 million on buying back its own shares. Well, that should certainly boost executive remuneration.

I am aware that provisions exist under the Patents Act 1977 for the Government to take independent action against Vertex. Crown use licensing is a powerful legal tool that can be used to safeguard public health. It can ensure the availability of fairly priced medicines in a competitive pharmaceutical market. Section 55(1) of the Act states that the Government can be granted non-authorised use of patents

“for the services of the Crown”.

That can be granted at all stages of manufacture, use, importation, sale and retention of a product. This is a legal opportunity to break the lethal deadlock that eats away at the youngest sufferers who stand to gain the most from this medicine. Crown use licensing has been used by the UK Government before, to great effect. They can suspend a patent and thereby force down the high price of particular pharmaceutical or medical equipment. For example, in 1991 the Government authorised the supply of machines known as lithotriptors for treating kidney stones. More recently, breast cancer patients have lobbied the Scottish Government to implement a Crown use licence on the drug Pertuzumab. Crown use licensing could similarly be used to overturn the patent monopoly on Orkambi by Vertex.

Leaving the EU: Live Farm Animal Exports

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Bill Wiggin

Monday 26th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy]

I cannot comment on the standard, as I have never looked into it, but I am happy to take the hon. Gentleman’s assurances—he is a fellow member of the Environmental Audit Committee. I was talking about exceptions outside the UK. We accept that live transit would continue to be allowed within the UK, but we also need to ensure that decent standards and proper monitoring are in place. The one exception would be across the land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland; I do not think anyone would argue that that should be subject to an export ban.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Once we leave the EU, we will completely lose control over the welfare standards of any animals that go from the UK into southern Ireland. Does the hon. Lady accept that those animals could continue their journey on to Spain or France?

[Kerry McCarthy]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to argue for not having live exports across the border from the north of Ireland to the Republic of Ireland, he is welcome to do so. This goes to a much wider issue that the Government have not yet managed to address: what do we do about the border between the north and the south once we leave the EU? Many people want it to continue in its current form, but the practicalities of leaving should mean that a hard border is established. That is one for the Government and perhaps not one that we in Westminster Hall can grapple with today, but the fact that we need to address the issue of animals being transported between the north and the south ought not to be used as an excuse for not addressing an export ban outside the British Isles.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), who I think is wrong about rural as opposed to urban communities. We have only to listen to the RSPCA to hear about unspeakable acts of vicious cruelty that take place against domestic animals in our urban areas to know that cruelty is not divided by region, people or nations, but by wickedness in individuals. It is absolutely the road to hell to ban things because we do not like the proper process that should be followed. I am particularly passionate about this because my amendment to the Animal Welfare Act 2006 would have seen the sentence for cruelty increased, but it was voted down by the Labour Government who took the credit for the Bill.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for revealing my fondness for tropical fish, although I am not sure that they are completely relevant in this debate as they tend to be flown in from Singapore on very long journeys. However, the problem with a ban is that we are all here because we want to see less bad treatment and better treatment of animals in transit, irrespective of where they are coming from or going to and irrespective of whether they are for slaughter or for breeding stock.

I had to pass exams to be allowed to transport my animals. It is wrong to say that there are not rules on what we are allowed to do. There is an eight-hour limit. We have to have tests and we can drive our animals only within 65 km of where we live without any regulation whatsoever. So what the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said is wrong. She should look it up on the DEFRA website

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Gentleman has just said that I said there were not any rules, but I said nothing of the sort. I accepted that there are rules in place, but I said that they are not being adhered to. For example, calves being held in a truck in a lay-by technically counts as a rest period, but most of us would agree that is not much of a relief for them. I did not say that there were not any rules.

[Bill Wiggin]

I thought the hon. Lady said that we tried to object to the eight-hour limit in the European Union.

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is an overall limit.

[Bill Wiggin]

I have given the matter a great deal of thought and it occurs to me that we should not ban live exports. If we do that, we will lose control through the Irish border and the animals whose welfare we seek to improve could end up travelling from southern Ireland to Spain or France on journeys that are considerably longer than they need to be. We need to improve the standards of transport within the United Kingdom, and when they arrive in Kent ready to cross the channel they must be properly inspected by vets. That means there needs to be lairage and unloading of the animals, and they need to be checked. Then they should be loaded into approved-only transporters. There are penalties for any suffering that happens on the journeys, but at the moment there is not an owner.

The lorry driver is not the owner of the animals in the back, so if a sheep’s leg is sticking out of the back of the truck, nobody suffers financially for that. If one of the animals is found to be suffering when they are unloaded, it gets put down and then there is a penalty, because that life is lost and that animal is no longer fit for human consumption. The whole purpose of its export has been taken away. That is the penalty that hangs over all livestock producers all the time. If someone is found to have put the wrong medicines in their animal, it is condemned. That is how we deal with and enforce rules.

If we have proper policing all the way along the transport route, it is perfectly reasonable to continue to send animals 22 miles over the seas as opposed to thousands of miles around the edge.