Schedule 3 - Licences for the purposes of section 13
Human Tissue Bill
11:00 am
Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
I want to raise two points. The first relates to the structure of fees. Paragraph 4(f) of schedule 3 refers to the power given to the authority to seek fees. I think that at a later point fees can be required to be paid along with an application. There is also the power to pay additional recurrent fees at such time as the authority can direct. As I recall, a power of that kind can be expressed as it has been, or it can be expressed in the same form but with a requirement that the fees should not exceed the costs incurred. The fees should therefore be reflective of costs incurred. It would be helpful if the Under-Secretary assured us that the power, although expressed in this form, will be limited to the reimbursement of costs incurred by the authority in undertaking the licensing process.
Paragraph 2 reads:
''A licence shall not authorise the carrying-on of more than one activity to which section 13 applies.''
As I understand it, the licensing process means that a pathology laboratory that is responsible for post mortems and the removal of material, not only for post mortem purposes but for subsequent use for other scheduled purposes, and also a premise where material is stored for subsequent use, will be required to have three licences. I want to be sure that that is the case, as I am unsure why the Government consider it necessary to have three licences when one might suffice. I should like to be reassured about the burdens that might accrue from having to be licensed that number of times for what is, from the practitioner's point of view, one set of activities and one set of material.
Paragraph 7 gives a power to revoke licences. If I recollect correctly, this is different from the structure of the HFEA's power in relation to its own licensed clinics. Will the Under-Secretary tell the Committee how it is different? I also recollect that the HFEA anticipates that, in its submissions to the review of the 1990 Act, one of its intentions will be to give itself sanctions—short of revoking the licence—to impose on those persons who are failing fully or appropriately to discharge their responsibilities under the licence. I am not sure that I can see that here: the power to revoke a licence is here, as is the power to impose conditions when a licence is issued, but there are no intermediate steps by which the authority could undertake enforcement, short of revoking a licence.
The revocation of a licence could be quite a draconian power in cases of relatively minor breaches of the licence requirement. I assume that we are not getting into the territory of clause 22, where the licence
requirement has been breached altogether: this would apply to some one operating under the licence in good faith, or who is simply failing to meet their obligations as the authority would wish. There does not seem to be any process of iteration in which the authority can say to the licence holder, ''You may not be meeting the conditions appropriately—we want you to do this and we have sanctions to require you to do it, short of revoking your licence.'' That may be excessive. If we are going to review the HFEA at some point—perhaps a couple of years hence—I should be sorry if we had incorporated in the Bill a structure based on the HFEA which subsequently turned out, in the HFEA's experience, to be inappropriate.