The hon. Lady makes an interesting, important and useful point that I undertake to pick up in our consultation in response to the accelerated access review. The landscape will continue to change fast over the next few years. The Bill, as amended, will promote the greater use of off-label medicines. Crucially, the database mechanism, which, I reassure everybody, is very different from the original registry proposed in a precursor Bill—it is to make clinicians aware of what drugs are available—will generate data that will be incredibly powerful in helping the system to adapt and use the freedoms I hope to give it through the accelerated access review. That will ensure we are better and faster at getting these repurposed medicines into use.
I am delighted to say that the Government are happy to support amendments 10 and 13. Amendment 10 would set out in the Bill that its purpose specifically includes promoting access to the innovative use of licensed medicines outside their licence indications. It puts four square at the heart of the Bill the aims of the Off-patent Drugs Bill, which was promoted by the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), and which, as hon. Members across the House have commented, had a lot of in-principle support. I am pleased, therefore, that we have found a form of words that moves it forward. At the heart of it, there is a clever protection for clinical sovereignty. We are not telling clinicians what they have to prescribe or putting in law a requirement that they prescribe in a particular way. We are giving them information on evidence-based off-label drugs. The feedback from clinicians so far is that it genuinely will help them to understand, promote and prescribe off-label uses.
Amendment 13 seeks to clarify the definition in the Bill of innovative medical treatments to make it clear that it includes off-label and unlicensed medicines. I mentioned earlier the pace at which genomics and informatics were uncovering new uses for drugs—some have referred to it as finding diamonds in the dustbin. There are extraordinary applications among the existing pharmacopoeia of tens of thousands of drugs. We now realise that many of them have particular impacts and effects. That is all to the good. It is thanks to the power of our life sciences sector that we are beginning to uncover those, and the Bill will support that.
With those comments in support of amendments 10 and 13, I hope I have given hon. Members enough reassurance and that they feel able to withdraw or not
press the probing new clauses. I will be happy, following Third Reading, to put in place, through the accelerated access programme, a clear plan for keeping on top of the system’s implementation and tracking the use of repurposed medicines. We will continue with the work we did with charities through the winter and with the very helpful discussions we had with the charitable sector, and the Department will look annually at the data and whether the landscape is changing, and if it is, we will keep that under review.
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