Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill (Second sitting)

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 15th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

That is a big step forward for the Government. It is almost Churchillian for the Minister and the Secretary of State to say that the Conservative Government are going to embrace price controls—something I am not sure any Conservative Government has done since 1945 when we had price controls during the war. I warmly commend the Government on the Bill, particularly as crystallised in the design of, and powers under, clause 3, which ensures that the Secretary of State has the power to make a statutory scheme, which can limit not only prices but profits.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Many Conservative Members may see the Bill as limiting the ability of drug companies to rip off the Government in a wholly unacceptable way, rather than as introducing price controls in the manner to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

[Rob Marris]

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, that is precisely what price controls do: they stop rip-offs. If one has price controls for other reasons, that is a separate debate. The price controls discussed in the Bill and in the 2006 Act are, as I understand it, precisely to stop rip offs. It appears that the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is now looking at the same thing, as the newspaper quote suggested. It may be an incorrect quote—I give that caveat—but it is a direct quote from the Secretary of State to say that the Government are looking at these things. That does not necessarily mean that they will do them, but it is an ideological watershed for a Conservative Government to look quite rightly at legislating to stop rip-off Britain with regard to prices, but also with regard to limiting profits.

That is what a statutory scheme has the power to do under section 263(1) of the 2006 Act. As I understand it—the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—clause 3, which is at the heart of this provision, does not say, “There has been a debate about whether we can have a statutory scheme or not”. For the sake of certainty, we are saying in clause 3 that the Government will have the power to make a statutory scheme, but I do not hear the Minister going on to say, “But that statutory scheme will have nothing to do with limiting profits.”

In the absence of the Minister’s saying that, he appears ideologically to encompass the concept that I embrace, which is that, in certain circumstances in capitalism, it is incumbent and right for a Government to intervene in the market to limit not only prices—rip-off Britain and so on—but profits. On certain occasions, the Government should have that power, and I think a pharmaceutical supplier to the NHS is one such example. There is a very narrow range of things I could see this happening in, but in pharmaceuticals it is possible.

I congratulate the Government on coming over to a socialist perspective, not only on pharmaceuticals but apparently, if The Times report is right, coming our way on energy companies. Long may that continue. Perhaps we can look at rail fares next. Will the Minister have a word with his fellow Ministers on that?