Medicines and Medical Devices Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-12
Topic: Health
Andrew Lansley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, who rightly emphasises the importance of accessible and understandable legislation in this area. There are two issues. As my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern said, there is the question of the sunset clause and the question of the preparation of consolidated legislation On Amendment 2 and a sunset clause, I believe that we should reserve the imposition of sunset clauses for legislation where we anticipate that those powers may not be needed in future. This is not the case with this legislation. With the end of the transition period we require our own domestic legislation for medicines, veterinary medicines and medical devices, so these regulations and these powers will be required The points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, quite legitimately, about the framework—the rather skeletal nature of the Bill as introduced to this House—must be dealt with in other ways, and in the group led by Amendment 4, we have substantive changes which make it a framework rather than simply a skeleton, and give us greater assurance about how the powers are structured in the Bill. I hope that if she reflects on it the noble Baroness will realise that shutting down these powers three years after Royal Assent would be a very taxing imposition. It would probably mean that in less than a year and a half, Ministers would be thinking about the reintroduction of legislation. We would risk the powers in this Bill being shut down in order for a Bill very like it to be introduced in a couple of years’ time. I see no intrinsic purpose in that, so I cannot support Amendment 2 I do however want to specifically refer to the other issue of consolidation and Amendments 26, 39 and 63, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel. There is a general proposition that people agree that, notwithstanding that additional regulations are going to have to be made in the weeks and months ahead using these powers, they will continue for the time being to be a complex mix of powers. Some will use this legislation, some will be in retained EU law and some will be in existing and other statutes and regulations What we want, as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern quite rightly emphasised, is legislation in this important area that is understandable and accessible. These are not regulations for the benefit of lawyers; they are regulations for the benefit of practitioners, so they need to be very clear. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, helpfully and kindly referred to the points I made in Committee about the role of the Law Commission. As I understand it, indeed, I think it is well to remember two things about this. First, Law Commission members are the experts in the process of codification and simplification. Consolidation of legislation is valuable, but it is even better for it to be codified and simplified so that the end result is far more accessible and understandable to practitioners So I would very much recommend that we proceed by asking the Government to put the areas of human medicines and medical device regulation, and perhaps veterinary medicine as well, into the work programme of the Law Commission. As I understand it, the 14th programme of work for the Law Commission will be the subject of discussion between the Government and the Law Commission up to the spring of 2022. The work programme of course will happen subsequently. So I do not think any rigid timetable should be imposed. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, would not insist upon a three-year limit or his amendment for this purpose because I hope that, at the end of this process with the Law Commission, we will end up with something much better that is brought forward as a Law Commission Bill—which can have an expedited process of scrutiny and passage through both Houses. As a former Leader of the House of Commons, and therefore responsible for the Government’s legislative programme, I say that all the evidence tells me that, if a requirement to insert a Bill into the Government’s legislative programme can be avoided, it should be We have been there with a Law Commission Bill on the regulation of clinical professions and professions allied to medicine, which is still waiting for legislation, because it included not only codification and simplification but substantive changes to the policy—so I am afraid that it is still waiting. So let us not go down that route; let us do the very sensible thing rightly initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, which is call for consolidation, making sure that it is not about changing policy but about making the legislation work effectively for the benefit of the various practitioners and those who depend on them. And let us work through the Law Commission. I hope that, if the Minister were to tell the House that he and the Government were willing to proceed in that direction, without a timetable in place, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, would not press his amendment when the time comes.