McClay Todd: Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcClay Todd: Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:15058. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TODD McCLAY (Associate Minister of Health): I moveThat the Medicines Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill streamlines the current Medicines Act 1981 and is an interim measure until such time as the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill is passed. This legislation and the Natural Health and Supplementary Products Bill will comprehensively overhaul New Zealand’s therapeutic products regulatory system. Indeed this bill modernises the definitions of medicine medical devices and therapeutic purpose. It also amends the medicines approval process to make legislation less prescriptive and instead specifies the detail in regulations. It will amend the prescribing framework to name nurse practitioners and optometrists as authorised prescribers and makes some minor changes to licensing requirements. The bill also adds a new prescribing category: delegated prescriber. The definitions in the bill have been developed to reflect New Zealand’s current regulatory framework and will be reviewed and updated again as part of the establishment of the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Agency.The changes that this bill proposes are consistent with this Government’s dedication to improving and enhancing access to health services and removing in a timely fashion unnecessary red tape while ensuring an emphasis on patient safety. The bill revokes the designated prescriber regulations for nurse practitioners and optometrists and names them as authorised prescribers. This will align their prescribing rights with those of medical practitioners dentists and midwives by enabling them to prescribe all medicinesappropriate to their scope of practice. This move acknowledges the safe and appropriate prescribing practice of these groups over the past 7 years and will support timely access to care for New Zealanders. The bill also creates a new category of prescriber the delegated prescriber who will be allowed to prescribe under a delegated prescribing order issued by an authorised prescriber. This bill also enables a licensing authority to take into account previous convictions when considering an applicant’s fitness to hold a licence and to impose conditions either when issuing a licence or at any other time while the licence is in effect.The default commencement date for the definition prescribing and other minor technical provisions will be 1 July 2014. The bill removes provisions in the Medicines Act that deal with medicines approvals and will replace these with a regulation-making power. The default commencement date for the medicines approvals provisions is set at 1 July 2017. This anticipates that the medicines approvals process provisions in the bill are likely to be superseded by the establishment of the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Agency but provides a backstop should the implementation of the agency be delayed. This bill provides an opportunity to amend some specific provisions of the Medicines Act in advance of the comprehensive overhaul of the therapeutics legislation that will occur via the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill. This is timely legislation and a big priority for this Government. I commend it to the House.