Human Medicines (Amendment) Regulations

Part of Business of the House (Today) – in the House of Commons at 7:38 pm on 18 March 2019.

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Photo of Jon Ashworth Jon Ashworth Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care 7:38, 18 March 2019

I beg to move,

That the Human Medicines (Amendment) Regulations 2019 (S.I., 2019, No. 62), dated 14 January 2019, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18 January, be revoked.

This motion concerns the serious shortage protocol. I thank the business managers for allowing time for this debate, but it really should not have come about as a result of the Official Opposition tabling a prayer against the regulations. The Government should have brought these proposals to the House for full debate and scrutiny, because the serious shortage protocol is perhaps one of the most far-reaching and contentious of the Government’s changes to medicines regulation in recent times.

The Government are using Henry VIII powers to enable Ministers to issue a serious shortage protocol for pharmacists to follow. The Department of Health and Social Care has stated that the protocol

“could be issued…in instances of serious national shortages and would enable community pharmacists and other dispensers to dispense in accordance with the protocol—rather than the prescription—without contacting a GP.”

These reforms represent a quite extraordinary power grab whereby Ministers can grant themselves the authority to instruct local pharmacists to ration drugs, overrule the GP’s prescription and dispense therapeutic generic equivalents or reduced dosages in the event of a medicines shortage.