I once again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) on bringing forward the Bill. I am sure I will not be the first to tell him what a feat it is to get a Bill through this House, with all its complexities, to Third Reading. Clauses 1 and 2 will give many people throughout the country hope that there is a cure for many well-known and not so well-known diseases. The database will make it much easier for clinicians up and down the country to find them and provide a better quality of life for many people.
I commend my hon. Friend for the time he has put into the Bill, and the effort he has made to obtain cross-party support on a number of issues. His work with the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) to include some of the provisions of his Off-patent Drugs Bill is to be commended. Although I did not support all the hon. Gentleman’s amendments, I do believe, as I stated on Report, that amendments 10 and 13 will help many people to live healthier and happier lives for years to come. I therefore congratulate him on his contribution to this Bill.
Some great medicines have been developed through the use of off-label treatment, and I believe that they will continue to be developed, even without the new clauses that the hon. Gentleman tabled. I do not profess
to be an expert in the field of off-label treatment, but I know that drugs such as infliximab, adalimumab and methotrexate are now regularly used in the treatment of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, having previously been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and cancer. The use of those treatments has come on leaps and bounds over the past 10 years, and that in an environment where, it is claimed, doctors are scared to innovate. As I have stated, I do not profess to be an expert in these matters, but I do know that many doctors communicate not just countrywide, but across the boundaries of diseases, and learn from each other. The database that the Bill establishes will allow that to be achieved with much greater ease.
A member of my office staff has been fortunate enough to benefit from the drugs that I have just mentioned. Indeed, he informs me that he was one of the first people, if not the first person, to be given the drug adalimumab to treat Crohn’s disease. He was prescribed it in Southampton back in 2007, when it was not licensed for use in children. Had the doctors not taken innovative steps to prescribe a medicine that had not yet been licensed, he would not have had such a fulfilling life—something that many of us take for granted. That is just one example, and I am sure that Members across the House have many more examples of doctors using innovative medicines to help out constituents and loved ones with all manner of diseases. I am therefore delighted to support the Bill on Third Reading and the great work my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry has done to get us here.
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