I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) on introducing this Bill. Let us hope that it has a successful outcome later. I should remind you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I am the Government’s pharmacy champion and vice-chairman of the all-party pharmacy group. Consequently, the majority of my comments will be based very much on pharmacists as dispensers of medicines that will include off-label ones.
I enter into the debate with some trepidation having listened to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who was incredibly well-informed and very persuasive. I hope that my comments will be practical and constructive. I want to concentrate on data-sharing of summary care records, as well as information to do with these medicines, and the decriminalisation of pharmacists for dispensing errors. I hope that the Minister can clarify his position on some of this stuff when he winds up.
12 pm
To develop a clinically focused community pharmacy service and for pharmacists to succeed in new care settings such as GP practices, we need better information sharing between community pharmacies and GP practices. We also need to make sure that there is a level playing field between the GPs and pharmacists who will be responsible for dispensing these medicines. The Bill refers to doctors not being negligent in prescribing off-label medical treatment if the GP’s decision is taken responsibly. I quite agree that patients’ safety must be paramount, and I congratulate the Government on their unwavering commitment to improving patient safety and the patient experience. GPs must therefore inform patients of the benefits of taking non-patented medicines and make them aware of any side effects.
I speak from personal experience. When I was 14, in 1974, I contracted shingles, which came perilously close to my eye. If it had got too close, I would have lost the sight in my right eye. I was put into the John Radcliffe eye infirmary, where doctors used me as a guinea pig to try out a new drug before it was put on the open market.
After they had tried it with me, they decided not to take it any further. After some while, I contracted regular migraines. I remember this incredibly well, for the simple reason that when my housemaster came to see me to make sure that I was all right, he turned up in the middle of David Lloyd’s maiden innings at Lords, when he scored 214 not out against India. Needless to say, I was more interested in listening to John Arlott on “Test Match Special” than in having a conversation with my housemaster, and I was positively delighted when he left.
I welcome the fact that doctors must show that they have taken the necessary steps to ensure that any decisions have been taken responsibly, including with regard to requests expressed by patients. However, if this rule is going to apply to doctors, it must also apply to pharmacists. When deciding to take a medicine, patients must be informed of the benefits but also of any side effects. Certainly, when I ended up having my shingles treatment, I was not aware of what the impact was going to be; my parents just made the decision for me. They are no longer alive, so I can no longer hold them accountable. However, GPs can only be struck off if they make a prescription error, while pharmacists can be sent to prison for doing exactly the same kind of thing. There must be some equality: we need a level playing field. We also need to make sure that any grievances can be considered.
I am going be slightly critical of the Government, I am afraid, because I have been campaigning on this issue for some while. The APPG had hoped that it might have been sorted through secondary legislation before the last general election, but I now understand that the Department of Health will delay introducing the necessary legislation until after the devolved Assembly elections and the new Executives and Governments have had a chance to bring in their own legislation. Legislation is unlikely to be introduced before the summer, so English pharmacists are dependent on legislation being passed for other pharmacists in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales—so much for a fair devolution deal. Will the Minister explain what practical steps are in place to safeguards patients’ safety and the exact timetable for when English pharmacists will not be reliant on the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Assemblies? He may wish to write to me, rather than covering it today.
The Bill will allow the Secretary of State for Health to enable the Health and Social Care Information Centre to establish a database of innovative medical treatments and their outcomes. I would urge him to share that information with the pharmaceutical organisations as well. The Bill will allow other GPs to have access to the database, so where do pharmacists fit in? I argue that the database should not just be for GPs, but for other care professionals, such as pharmacists and perhaps even some local authorities, especially where they are dealing with social care issues.
Summary care records are an electronic summary of key clinical information about a patient—medicines, allergies, adverse reactions—sourced from GP records. It is hoped that all pharmacists will have access to it by autumn 2017. It is vital not to have the same kind of delay as has happened with the decriminalisation of prescription errors. The all-party group on pharmacy called for that in its document on the Government’s first 100 days. I argue that pharmacists should have access to the database of non-patented drugs and medicines.
I fully support the Government’s commitment to making sure that GPs share summary care records with other health professionals, such as pharmacists, but in so doing, they must ensure that patients are happy for their medical records to be shared with other health professionals. We must also ensure that insurance companies do not have access to such medical records. I would be grateful if the Minister wrote to me to explain what progress has been made and stating when pharmacies will have access to summary care records.
My great-grandfather, a rural vicar, said that he did not mind his congregation looking at their watches, but got very concerned when they started shaking them. I notice that my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry is just about to start shaking his watch. He is champing at the bit to ensure that he gets the Bill on to the statute book, and I will therefore conclude my remarks.