§ Mr. Michael Morrisasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he is now able to make a statement about the outcome of consultation, undertaken by his Department, on the subject of controlling parallel importing of medicinal products.
§ Mr. FowlerFollowing the Minister for Health's statement on 8 December I have undertaken consultations on how best to strengthen existing safety requirements applying to parallel imports of medicinal products. The648W response to the consultation document MLX 150 revealed general support for our proposals but sharp differences of opinion about how tight the safeguards needed to be. Our intention remains to control the safety of parallel imports of medicinal products by means of a new, and more tightly drawn, licence exemption order. At the same time we intend to extend the existing system of licensing under the Medicines Act to imports from EEC countries. Our aim is to ensure that in future all drugs dispensed in this country, whatever their origin, comply with our strict standards of safety control. In the light of the consultation, I have decided to amend the proposed scheme in order to ensure that we have more information about the source of parallel imports, and any repackaging which may be carried out. The scheme will ensure that the existing rules about labelling of medicines also apply to parallel imports.
I shall be making the new order in the next few weeks. At the same time, I shall publish the full licensing scheme for parallel imports which will then come into operation at once.