CHILD PROTECTION (MEDICINES) (Hansard, 11 June 1975)

§ Mrs. Jill Knight (Birmingham, Edgbaston)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide protection for young children against the dangers inherent in medicinal substances. It is always not only infinitely pathetic but desperately worrying to have a poisoned child on one's hands. The House has twice given me leave to introduce a Bill to tackle the incidence of accidental child poisoning, but the Government have stone-walled further progress with monotonous regularity with the cry that no Bill is necessary because the whole thing can be done under present legislation. If that is the case, why has this not happened? [Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order.

§ Mr, Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)
You do not say that to anyone else.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) must not talk to me like that.

§ Mrs. Knight
Perhaps it is an apposite moment to say that Ministers have a lot on their minds. I do not cavil at the fact that they have to take a good deal of bullying by myself and others to end a period of delays, excuses and evasions and to bring the Minister to the point of saying that steps are at least to be taken. That can be seen from the Official Report of 23rd April 1975, at column 327.
The reason I seek to introduce this Bill today is that those steps are too few and too faltering. The Government must understand that the public demand nothing less than determined, firm and comprehensive action to stop little children from being poisoned by accidentally swallowing medicines from bottles or containers which are too easily opened.
Yet the Government deserve a bouquet even if it is, to use the Minister's description of his own measures in his statement, "limited". The Government set up a Committee to study child resistant closures, and they get one bloom for not taking everything it said as gospel. They questioned experts about the report, and 422 it was just as well they did. Parts of the report were sound but other parts were not. As Dr. David Reid, the paediatric expert from Birkenhead wrote: It is unfortunate that the Medicines Commission did not seek the advice of the British Paediatric Association or its representative on the British Standards Institution before publishing their report on child resistant closures. As the Medicines Commission was deprived of the necessary information about CRCs, it is perhaps not surprising that their report was disappointing. Dr. Reid concludes by saying: Paediatric poisoning will decrease dramatically or almost disappear if CRCs are adopted, as suggested several years ago. The failure of the Department of Health and its advisers has resulted in the unnecessary poisoning over the years of at least 100,000 children. What an indictment!
The Government get another bloom for rejecting that part of the report which suggested that the problem could be solved by introducing strip and blister packs for tablets. This may have been thought to be a good idea, but it is bulky, expensive, and will cause difficulties for patients who have to take two or three pills a day.
I give one more flower to the Government for introducing dark-tinted or opaque containers, and yet another for limiting the number of tablets in a bottle of such items as junior aspirin. In an earlier speech in the House I pointed out that 30 junior aspirin can be a lethal or near-lethal dose, but that bottles of 50 junior aspirin were still being marketed.
Therefore, the Government are awarded four flowers and a plume of greenery for decreeing that aspirin and paracetamol tablets shall, after 1st January 1977, be packed in child resistant containers. But the bouquet would have been far bigger, and the time of the House this afternoon would have been saved, if the Government had gone the whole hog and said that all medicines which could be dangerous to young children would have to be put in child resistant containers.
The Medicines Report rightly states: Most medicines are potentially dangerous. Why are the Government stopping so far short of covering all dangerous medicines? We are not concerned simply with the deaths of children, because most poisoned children do not die, but with the fact that all of them have to undergo treatment 423 which is extremely distressing and painful—and expensive, too. A night or two in hospital, multiplied by thousands, costs the National Health Service money which it simply has not got. How absurd to fail to take action which, as the American and Canadian experience has proved beyond question, would avoid that pain and expense.
Contraceptive pills are not covered, although one doctor said recently that more tiny children have to spend a night or two in hospital recovering from the effects of a stomach pump after taking mother's birth pill than after any other accidentally-taken medicine. These young children have mothers who frequently are on the pill, and of course those pills are kept in the home.
Furthermore, cough syrup is not covered, although some contains enough soporifics and anti-histamines to pole-axe any tot who swigs the whole bottle. The flavour is often so good that the tiny tot is encouraged to drink it. No liquid medicines are covered, although much of it is dangerous to small children. Why did the Government not insist that warnings should be put on these bottles? That could be done at once with no expense at all.
Finally, I must point out that unless the Government pass legislation adopting CRCs over the whole range of potentially dangerous medicines, all sorts of a soi-disant, do-it-yourself CRC may be used. The chemical industry and the packaging people know that for many reasons CRCs must come. They want to export, and we must remember that soon all countries will insist that these products should be child-resistant. Some firms are already adopting their own.
Unless there is a properly agreed standard, laid down by law, some will be poor. Already some cheap copies of American caps, which do not meet American safety standards, have been introduced over here. A hotch-potch of differing closures, some effective and some not, would have very dangerous implications.
I ask the House for leave to introduce this small Bill which seeks to do what casualty officers, paediatricians, public 424 opinion and thousands of distraught parents have been demanding for years.