Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 24th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I thank all Members who have made contributions to the debate. We find ourselves in a situation where we have some time available, which is amazing.

Let me refer to the interventions we heard in the early part of the debate, because a range of interesting points have been raised. The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) made the point that the Bill provides the opportunity to look at drugs that have not been licensed, such as Lucentis and Avastin, which is not licensed for age-related macular degeneration but is so needed by that group of people. I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State say that he would look at that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris), in a number of amusing interventions, talked about policy on profit control of the pharma sector and found that the Conservative party is marching on to the centre ground—or has perhaps gone past the centre ground.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) talked about the proportion of the NHS budget spent on dealing with diabetes. He was concerned about the increase in the drugs bill and suggested the use of structured interventions, not just more drugs, because such a large proportion of the NHS budget is being spent on diabetes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) made the important point that we need to ensure the measures in the Bill do not act as a disincentive for pharma companies to conduct research into rarer conditions. I think that hon. Members who have contributed know we are walking the line in terms of making savings but making sure there are not disincentives.

The right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) welcomed the Bill. He talked about our ageing population—we returned to that with our last speaker—and the increasing drugs bill. He talked about the importance of new drugs, but also the need to deal with unacceptable profiteering, something referred to by a number of Members.

The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) talked about the UK having the biggest research network in the world. She talked about change and the fact that the pharma companies would be nervous and anxious. She welcomed the tidying up aspect of the Bill and I think the general view of Members in all parts of the House was to welcome that. Like a number of hon. Members, she talked about not just enabling the management of cost pressures but doing something more radical. That has been a real flavour of the debate: using this as an opportunity to do something different. I agree with her concerns about the data collection aspects of the Bill and I will say more about that. I also agree that we need to do something more radical. She talked about tackling the five-year delay to access new medicines and rightly pointed out that that is probably where our poorer survival rates are coming from.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) commended The Times for investigating this issue. He also talked about the information powers and questioned whether the Department of Health had the analytical ability to use the data being gathered. That is an important question. If new data needs to be gathered, what are we going to do with it?

The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) acknowledged the value of the competitive market, but talked about the sometimes outrageous increases in the price of generic drugs—and we have heard some staggering examples today. He gave the example of a rise of £600 per item dispensed in one particular case, and he hopes, as other hon. Members do, that the Competition and Markets Authority will take action. That has been a key theme in tonight’s debate.

The right hon. Gentleman also talked about not wanting to pit the needs and interests of some patients who need drugs such as PrEP against those who need other drugs. I agree, and I do not think that we should go there in our debate. He spoke about the slippery slope when we get into debating whether to delay adopting even approved treatments. In his view, that provides more evidence that the NHS needs more resources.

The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies) talked about the impact on his constituent of a drug prescribed to her that helps her to work and increases her energy levels, the cost of which has increased by 645%. We must maintain a focus on the impact on individuals of the decisions that we make. She has found a drug that suits her, and it would be dreadful for her if it were withdrawn. The hon. Gentleman also talked about the difficulties of introducing new competition into the market. His constituent is hoping that the Bill goes through, as are many others here tonight, and wants action on competition and markets. Let us all hope this goes through.

The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) talked about intervention to deal with market failure. In his view, we need to separate out the companies that are doing good research, such as the brain tumour research that he has recently seen, and those that have nothing to do with producing new and innovative products, but are just making money.

[Rob Marris]

I would like to cite for my hon. Friend and the House the Library briefing, which shows that it is not exactly as cut and dried as the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) seemed to think. It tells us that the Competition and Markets Authority took action against pharmaceutical companies with regards to generic pricing, and that GlaxoSmithKline and a number of other companies were fined £45 million when it was found that payments had been made in order to prevent the antidepressant medication Paroxetine being offered on the generics market. GSK is a great pharma company for coming up with new drugs, but it crossed the line in this case, according to the Library briefing, so it is not always either/or when it comes to these pharma companies.

[Barbara Keeley]

No, but I think the hon. Member for Torbay was talking about companies that are not doing any research, but just buying up generic products and profiteering from them. There has been general condemnation of those sort of companies on all sides.

[Kevin Foster]

I want to be clear about this point. I think the shadow Minister would probably agree that certain names keep on popping up, particularly in The Times investigation, of companies that seem to be regularly involved in some of the most eye-watering price increases and involved in the mixed model. This Bill is about tackling anyone else who might be thinking of following that kind of business model as a way of exploiting the NHS for money.

[Barbara Keeley]

Very much so.

The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) welcomed the Bill and talked about the fact that individual CCGs could save £1 million on unused repeat prescriptions. A number of different forms of savings could clearly be made. She talked about the pressure on social care, and I join her in my concern about that. The right hon. Member for Chelmsford spoke earlier about an ageing population and the need for drugs, but older people also do not want to be isolated. It is worrying that 16,000 cases of malnutrition were found last year with an average age of 64 among those cases. People need social care, and I hope that the new Chancellor will listen and bring forward funding for social care in the autumn statement, because people need more than drugs.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) made clear earlier, Labour supports the broad aims of the Bill and what the Government are seeking to achieve—better control of the cost of medicines. However, as my hon. Friend also outlined, we have a number of concerns, and I hope that the Minister will address them in his closing speech.

As well as taking the understandable measures to collect pharmaceutical data and manage costs, the Bill also introduces provisions to manage the purchase of other medical supplies. I was glad to hear the Secretary of State raise in his opening speech the issue of the impact on the medical supply sector, but I have heard concerns expressed that the medical technology sector sees the new information measures as “onerous”. The hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) mentioned that, too. There is a concern that measures in the Bill fail to take into account the unique characteristics of medical devices and the medical device industry. I hope that they will start to be taken into account as the Bill progresses. There is seen to be a danger that the measures will put additional burdens on that sector and the NHS, and lead to higher costs. I hope that that is not the Government’s intention; it would be ludicrous if costs were increased by a Bill that is designed to manage them.

We need to bear it in mind that the medical technology industry employs around 89,000 people in the UK, has an annual turnover of over £17 billion and has seen employment growth of around 11% in recent years. Some 99% of the UK’s 3,310 medical technology firms are SMEs, with 85% of them having a turnover of less than £5 million. The cap levels at which data could be collected were mentioned earlier. We should bear it in mind that we are talking about an awful lot of small companies.

The Bill imposes a regulatory burden on all companies in the supply chain. The reporting requirements will affect all firms producing medical supplies, including the very small organisations. The issues we have extensively discussed on pharmaceutical pricing bear no relation to the price of other medical supplies. The example of a particular type of product was mentioned earlier, but they are or seem to be treated the same way in the Bill.

On the scale of the burden being imposed, the Government’s impact assessment is not much help. It says:

“The main costs will be on manufacturers, wholesalers and dispensers. These costs have not been quantified, as their magnitude will not be known until after consultation on subsequent regulations.”

Measures seem to have been bolted on to this Bill, as Members have mentioned, at the last minute, but because they could have a negative impact on the medical technology sector, we need to be very aware of them. The new information powers proposed by the Government are being put forward at a time when manufacturing firms are going through the uncertainty surrounding this country’s leaving the EU. These measures can only add to that uncertainty. As I said, 99% of the medical technology firms are SMEs, with 85% of them having a turnover of less than £5 million.

Notes on the financial implications of the Bill put forward a curious position that

“no policies will be directly implemented as a result of these changes. Their implementation would require additional future changes to secondary legislation and additional Impact Assessments to assess their cost effectiveness.”

Ministers are asking us to change primary legislation to give the Government new information powers, but the details and impact of those new powers on the supply chain will emerge only in future. That level of uncertainty is unacceptable, and we will seek to amend the relevant clauses in Committee if we feel that this still needs to be resolved.

Importantly, the information powers will also impact on dispensing GPs and pharmacists. I note that the BMA was not represented at the workshop held by the Department of Health on the information powers. We wait to hear, but I would find it unusual if our hard-pressed dispensing GPs would welcome the additional work required of them to provide and disclose information to the Government.

The other part of the supply chain affected by the new information powers will be pharmacists. The Government have just imposed punitive cuts on pharmacists, which we discussed in the House last week. I am still deeply concerned about those cuts. Ministers do not seem to understand what they are doing to the sector. On Friday, an independent community pharmacist in my constituency told me that he estimated that the Government cuts would cost him £86,000 a year, and that he envisaged an average cut of £60,000 for many pharmacies. That will certainly mean staff cuts, but it also means potential bankruptcies for the pharmacies that will be hardest hit.

In relation to that, and the new information powers that the Bill imposes, Pharmacy Voice told me that

“small volume pharmacies are the hardest hit by the proposals and many face a funding cut of around 20% in 2017/18 from the imposition of cuts announced…They do not have teams of administrative staff who can respond to demands for information, and the likelihood is that the NHS would insist on information being provided in a specific format.

It could be information that they do not currently analyse. For example, when a pharmacy buys stock for dispensing, it may also include purchases of medicines for sale over the counter. The overall discount the pharmacy gets on the order is not allocated to each item, and pharmacies could not provide the actual price paid per item.”

On behalf of the pharmacists that it represents, Pharmacy Voice wants to ensure that the cost of meeting the Government’s information requirements is fully funded by the NHS. It feels that the imposition of cuts has already jeopardised the future of the pharmacy sector, and that of small pharmacy businesses in particular. Can the Minister assure me that the cost of the information that must be gathered under the new information powers will not impose an additional burden on pharmacists?

The Labour Opposition support the broad aims of the Bill and the measures to control the costs of medicines, but, as I said earlier, we are concerned about the information powers that the Government want to take, which are considered to be “onerous” by the medical supplies sector. We want to be reassured that they are not. The work and the costs involved could deal yet another blow to the pharmacy sector, which, as I have said, is still counting the costs of the Government’s imposition of funding cuts amounting to 12% for the rest of this year and over 7% next year. We will table amendments in Committee relating to the work and the costs involved in information-gathering.

We also ask Ministers to give serious consideration to using all future rebates from the pharmaceutical sector to improve access to treatments for patients. A number of Members have referred to the need to examine that much bigger issue of access to drugs and treatments, and I hope that Ministers will take the opportunity to do so as the Bill progresses.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Philip Dunne)]

What a great pleasure it is, Mr Deputy Speaker, to stand before you after this important debate, with a little time in which to satisfy as many Members as I can, while recognising that the Committee stage will begin shortly and we shall then have an opportunity to discuss points with which I cannot deal today. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate. We have heard a number of excellent contributions, some of which showed a surprising knowledge of the intricacies of pharmaceutical pricing but were none the less very welcome.

The Bill deals with a treasured national institution, our national health service, and with the need to secure the best possible value for the taxpayer. Medicines represent the second largest cost to the NHS, after staff, and it is important that we do not pay over the odds. The level of interest and the quality of the contributions that we have heard today have shown how important that is to all Members. I find it refreshing that a debate involving the NHS should feature the degree of consensus that has erupted across the House today. I am led to believe that—as has been pointed out by other Members—this is a relatively unusual occurrence, so I shall enjoy it for as long as I can.

The debate reinforces the principles of securing the best possible value for the NHS, making decisions on the basis of good-quality information, and supporting this country’s innovative pharmaceutical industry, to which several Members have referred. Those are principles on which we can all agree. However, the debate has raised a number of other issues, some of which I hope to clarify for the benefit of Members who have commented on them. In one of her closing comments, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) sought to link last week’s announcements about community pharmacy funding with the Bill. I can reassure her that there is no link whatsoever between the Bill’s provisions on information collection and the announcement about decisions on community pharmacy funding. The funding changes will come into effect in December and are not reliant on any of the provisions in the Bill, and the provisions in the Bill will not change those decisions.

[Barbara Keeley]

Perhaps I was not clear enough, but I was not making that point. I was making the point that the cuts imposed by the Government will mean that some community pharmacies—the smaller ones; the independent ones—will not have the necessary staff. If the Government are imposing a new information-gathering requirement, who will carry out that task? As I said, there may be staff cuts amounting to between £60,000 and £80,000, and people will simply not be able to absorb a new requirement.

[Mr Dunne]

Just to reassure the hon. Lady, I can tell her that the establishment cost for each pharmacy is currently £25,000, and there will be a reduction in that cost rather than a much larger cost. She must be referring to companies that have several establishments, rather than to individual ones. I will touch on the points that she has raised about information gathering in a moment.

We have heard a number of allegations during the debate, starting with those made by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who I am sure will be joining us shortly, that the Conservative party appears to have broken out in a rash of Corbynism. I can assure the hon. Gentleman categorically that that is not the case. What we are seeking to do through the Bill is address points, which have been made by hon. Members on both sides of the House, about the potential for exploitative pricing, particularly of unbranded generics that are of low volume, in circumstances where there is no competition from an alternative supplier in the market. I believe that there is considerable agreement on that across the House.

I welcome the support for the Bill from the Labour Front Bench, from the Front Bench of the Scottish National party and from the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). They all support the principles behind the Bill. I look forward to what I hope will be a rapid conclusion to proceedings on this short Bill in Committee. Doubtless hon. Members will be raising important points in Committee, but I am sure that we will continue to have constructive contributions throughout.

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston mentioned difficulties of access and funding for new medicines. These points were also raised by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford). The NHS is investing in innovative medicine and, in the first year of the current voluntary scheme, medicines covered by the innovation scorecard saw an increase of more than 18% compared with growth of about 5% in medicines not on the scorecard. That illustrates that we are prepared to fund patients’ use of innovative medicines under the existing scheme. However, we recognise the need to continue to ensure patient access to new medicines. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred earlier to the accelerated access review, which was announced earlier today. That will accelerate the speed at which 21st-century innovation in medicine and medical technologies can be taken up by patients and their families through the NHS. That will present a real advantage—bringing forward innovations from pharmaceutical companies, not only in this country, and driving them through for use in the NHS.

A number of hon. Members have referred to the investigative work of The Times in helping to highlight the problems with unbranded generics. I would like to add our welcome to the investigation that was undertaken by those journalists, but gently to point out that the Government were already aware of some of the problems. Indeed, we published a consultation in December last year raising that issue, and I think it was partly in the light of that that The Times decided to do its work. I do not wish to decry that work in any way, however. It was clearly helpful.

We have referred cases to the Competitions and Markets Authority, as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) mentioned. The CMA has imposed fines in one case, as he said, and it is expecting to reach a final decision on another in the coming months. Two more cases were opened in March and April this year. We are looking to refer examples of bad practice to the relevant authorities when we come across them.

The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire asked how the data collection would work. That point was also raised by other hon. Members. We already collect significant data from the supply chain for medicines under the voluntary scheme and the statutory scheme. We collect data from manufacturers and wholesalers of generics, and from pharmacies themselves. As part of developing the regulations, and of the consultation that will take place before we introduce the scheme, we are looking to identify as many automated data collection solutions as possible, in order to minimise the burden to which the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South referred. In particular, we recognise that some of the medical products companies are small companies, and we want to make their burden as light as possible.

The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire referred to the devolved Administrations and how we will work with them. Our intention is that they would be able to access data not on a timing of our choosing, but as they require, and that, again, will be undertaken in a manner that we hope to capture in a memorandum of understanding so that there is clarity between each Administration and ourselves as to how that will work.

The right hon. Member for North Norfolk asked in particular about how we intend to control the medicines bill overall, and a number of Members have mentioned that. The cost of medicines across the NHS is rising quite rapidly. That is a concern, and it gets to the heart of why we have sought to introduce this legislation.

We are looking in the first place to align the statutory and the voluntary cost control schemes for the supply of medicine. At present, companies may decide to join either scheme depending on the other benefits they perceive in the schemes, but we believe that the financial benefit to the NHS of each scheme should be the same. Our proposals will put beyond doubt the Government’s powers to amend the statutory scheme to achieve this objective, which the impact assessment has indicated should save the taxpayer some £90 million a year. Draft regulations of these provisions will be available at the Committee stage.

The second element of the Bill strengthens the Government’s powers to set prices of medicines where companies charge unreasonably high prices for unbranded generic medicines. In most cases, competition works well to keep prices down. However, when it does not, and when companies are making excessive profits, the Government should be able to take action. This Bill closes a current loophole in the legislative framework. We are all agreed across the House that we cannot allow profiteering at the expense of the NHS.

Thirdly, the Bill will strengthen the Government’s powers to collect information on the costs of medicines, medical supplies and other related products from across the supply chain. Putting existing voluntary provision of information regarding medicines on a statutory footing will enable the Government to set more accurately and fairly the reimbursement arrangements for community pharmacies and dispensing GPs. In addition, the power will provide vital data to underpin the reformed statutory scheme for controlling medicine pricing, and will give us more evidence about whether companies are making excessive profits at the expense of the NHS.

I want to reiterate what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his opening remarks to assure the House about the impact of the information powers on the medical technologies industry. It may surprise Members, and in particular Opposition Members, that the powers to require information from suppliers already exists in section 260 of the National Health Service Act 2006—[Interruption.]—which the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West says from a sedentary position he remembers bringing into effect, but we think that those enforcement powers are draconian and wish to make them more proportionate. The Government have never in fact used the powers under the 2006 Act, and we want to marry powers for information gathering with those we will have for medicines, so that there is no confusion in future about which information regime applies.