§ 6. Mr. Lathamasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what progress is being made in setting up the review committee on the selected list of National Health Services drugs.
§ Mr. Kenneth ClarkeWe announced details of the advisory committee on NHS drugs on 12 July. The committee's first meeting is to be held on 23 July.
§ Mr. LathamAs the doctors do not want a personal appeal system, may we now be assured that the new review committee will get on quickly with the job of reviewing the list, because there seem to be about a dozen drugs which doctors and patients believe should be restored to the list as soon as possible?
§ Mr. ClarkeI assure my hon. Friend that we shall ask the committee to get on with its task as quickly as possible. I cannot guarantee that it will admit to the list all the drugs to which my hon. Friend referred. There are genuine divisions of clinical opinion, and all of those that have been excluded so far have been excluded on the unanimous opinion of a group of experts who said that there was no scientific or medical need for them.
§ Mr. ParkIs the right hon. and learned Gentleman still prepared to consider specific cases where a medication is seen by the medical profession to be the only one?
§ Mr. ClarkeThere are no drugs seen by the medical profession to be the only available drugs and which have been excluded from the NHS. We still get some individual complaints, but, as I say, the best advice that we could gather was that there was no medical or scientific need for the drugs that are now excluded. However, the new committee will look at individual products, at the request of doctors and manufacturers, and consider whether anything should be restored to the NHS list.
§ Dame Jill KnightWhy does my right hon. and learned Friend think that the BMA refused the appeal machinery offered by the Government? Could it have been because of the minuscule number of complaints about drugs that had been received?
§ Mr. ClarkeIt would not be wise for me to try to speak on behalf of the BMA on all these matters. There was a division of opinion before it was decided to decline the offer that we made. I agree with my hon. Friend that the number of difficulties turned out to be remarkably small and that many doctors no longer perceived a need for the individual appeal mechanism about which we were once talking.
§ Mr. HowardWill my right hon. and learned Friend ensure that the drug Mucodyne is drawn to the attention of the review body at the earliest possible opportunity?
§ Mr. ClarkeIt will be considered by the committee at its first meeting.