Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Lord O'Donnell Excerpts

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly]

My noble friend is right. The Government are suggesting that there should be a registry because it would make no sense not to record innovations. It could otherwise not be replicated. The Government’s preferred approach is to set up a registry but not to put that on the face of the Bill.

In Committee, my noble friend Lord Howe committed on behalf of the Government to explore constructively what might be useful in terms of record-keeping and reporting in relation to medical innovation. The Government have begun engaging with partners in the health system to discuss how to achieve this goal and will continue to do so as the Bill progresses. This mechanism should be developed with a sufficiently light touch so that clinicians see it as being facilitative of good practice rather than burdensomely bureaucratic. It is also important to consider the efficiency of the data-collection mechanism and how it can be developed in the most cost-effective way.

In response to my noble friend Lord Cormack, once we have a Bill, the Government will work closely with the professional bodies and all other organisations to help the health system and patients understand and prepare for the changes to the law made by the Bill, including producing any guidance that might be helpful.

[Lord O'Donnell (CB)]

As a strong supporter of this Bill, I back the idea that we must learn from the innovation. To be honest, I worry not about the successes but about the failures not being recorded. Therefore, I am grateful that a register will be set up. However, will it be compulsory? If it is not, that would not meet the requirements.

[Baroness Jolly]

At the moment, it is not the intention that it should be compulsory, but it should be such that doctors would not dream of not recording on the register. In that way innovation is spread but failures are disseminated, if that makes sense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Warnock (CB)]

Surely it is important that this register should be compulsory. The obvious point is that if you innovate and it fails and then you do not register, that would destroy the whole point of having a register.

[Lord O'Donnell]

Perhaps I may come back on whether it is relevant for this Bill. As I understand it, the Minister said that the Government were deciding to set up this register and therefore it is not a question of what is in the Bill. We were asking whether the Government can make the register compulsory and how they would do that.