Clause 25
Health Bill [Lords]
4:45 pm
John Pugh (Southport, Liberal Democrat)
I have to apologise for the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey is not here, because she is the expert on this subject and would have a great deal more to say than I have. I have no problem with the general tenor of what the Government are endeavouring to do. Public authorities have always had to strike a balance so that naked commercial interests do not dominate the pharmaceutical world. The needs of the community are paramount, and there has always been a need to structure the market publicly in some way. Anybody who has been an elected councillor or any sort of elected representative will have been lobbied at some point by a pharmacy or a dispensing physician about their position, their share of the market and the placing of other facilities close to them.
I agree with the hon. Member for Eddisbury that whatever is done needs to be properly and thoroughly evidence-based, and if it is not evidence-based everywhere, it will not be well done. It cannot be lobby-based, because there are plenty of powerful interests in the pharmaceutical world and many prosperous commercial practices that will weigh in heavily to get their way if left to their own devices. I therefore warm to the amendments because they would preserve the rights of dispensing practices, particularly in rural areas, and they make clear that the market must serve patients rather than simply appear by accident and as a result of commercial happenstance.