No. The issue is different. You see, the government demands drugs are proven to be safe before use, and safe for specific purposes, specific treatments.

Now I say "demands" because the government does zero research on the subject, zero testing. Rather, the government demands that the pharmaceutical companies do this, at great expense, by third parties, extensively regulated, involving at least hundreds of UK patients, ... a total maze (that somehow seems to provide excellent, HIGHLY paid jobs for ex-government regulatory doctors in these pharmaceutical companies). Also, this has to be done on a per-country basis.

Now there was an issue. These companies had done that for one drug for this specific treatment, this was the more expensive drug. They hadn't done it for the "cheaper" alternative they used elsewhere in the world for that treatment, but that drug was being used for another treatment. Note: this makes it highly illegal for these companies to suggest using that drug.

(so the accusation made that these companies were preventing the use of the cheaper drug is ... evil. I don't know another word for it. They refused to allow prescription of that drug for the eye problem because the government forces them to refuse that. And now the government also decided it's illegal as well. Great. If we're unlucky they'll just withdraw the drug altogether. Then eye and cancer patients are fucked, but hey, the government won't have to pay. Hurray !)

Also cheaper is between quotes because it's only cheaper because they never went through the governments' expensive approval process, which would have added to the cost and therefore changed the picture. Furthermore it would have factored in the pricing decisions made by the companies.

So now we have established that the government gets to completely disregard it's own safety rules to save a buck (no worries "it's safe" because it's proven to be safe elsewhere with a differently manufactured pill with the same active substance ... except ... no it isn't, or at least, you can't be sure). And if, for some reason, there is a difference between the drug when using it for cancer and using it for eye treatment ... who will pay for the damage caused to patients ? Because does this now also mean the government assumes responsibility for this drug (which they did in the past (not for this drug), then when it cost them money ...).

The issue with drugs "having issues" is that generally patients die or develop a very serious health issue when drugs have unanticipated side effects. This whole safety regulation is setup to avoid that and to make sure pharmaceutical companies never take too much risk, and can be forced to carry the cost of fucking up.

Note: this is an example of the UK government "taking responsibility" for it's own medical fuckups: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-45101091

I would argue that even if this turns out to be safe, sooner or later letting the government just bypass drug safety rules will cause very severe issues (or should I say, will cause very severe issues again), and then these people are going to find out that not only does the government not take care of them ... well ... read the above link and then read the next paragraph:

> In October 1979, three judges at Birmingham Magistrates' Court dismissed the prosecution's evidence that the University of Birmingham had contravened the Health and Safety at Work Act.

(Just so we're clear, at this point it was clear that the government had not only failed to provide adequate isolation to a lethal disease, but gotten a report that it had failed to do so BEFORE any actual harm, THEN the government lab accidentally infected someone working above the laboratory, imprisoned her and most of her family and colleagues immediately (with zero compensation), ... and then decided the government had zero culpability in all this. Why ? Because it was impossible that this woman was infected with a lethal disease that didn't exist anywhere in the country except in that lab, but she had not gotten it from that lab, so ... no compensation ... yes, really. To add extreme insult to very severe injury and death, the queen granted honors to the witness that exonerated the government later that year ...

So to say that I don't think the UK government should be trusted to make medical decisions like this is a vast understatement. We are all going to die)