My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 59, 60, 61 and 62, to which I have put my name. It was very clever of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, to have an amendment about the medical royal colleges lead to a discussion on value-based pricing and the cancer drugs fund. I am tempted to have that debate because it may be much more interesting; it is an issue that we should debate at some stage. In responding to the previous amendment, the noble Earl highlighted the Government’s strong backing for life sciences. When we talk about value-based pricing, we must consider how we could reimburse cell-based therapy, which is not drug therapy, at what stage in the development of cell-based therapy reimbursement should kick in and what value would be put on different stages. That would be a good debate to have.
Moving on from that, I strongly support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, on the inclusion of the Chief Nursing Officer. I also support her in asking why Health Education England does not have a nurse education director. If the nursing workforce is the largest health workforce in the NHS and does not have a nurse education directive, something is missing and needs to be replaced.
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I absolutely support Amendment 60, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg. I remember when I was responsible for the research ethics committee. When I took over I was told that there were 152 research ethics committees in England alone, when France, with the same population, had only 35. I asked why, and quickly found out about the problems referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and why the delays occurred. Now that we are to have a Health
Research Authority, I cannot see why it cannot clear, ethically and every other way, a clinical trial as part of a multi-centred clinical trial. The local NHS trust will have only to make sure that its board and its patient liaison committee are aware that such a trial is taking place. Its ethics committee will not have to go through it, which will reduce the time considerably and might encourage more clinical trials—which we currently have lost—to take place in the United Kingdom.
I turn to Amendment 61 and 62, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough. He is now at home and recovering. He has been asked to rest for about a month or so, if his family can manage to keep him down, but he is well and his treatment is going well. His son sent me an e-mail about it; our good wishes are doing the trick. Amendment 61 merely says that those who deliver patient care for NHS patients should be treated in the same way as NHS trusts. That cannot be wrong. Surely there is an omission. Amendment 62, to which the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, referred, replaces “have regard to” in the Bill with “comply with”. What does “have regard to” mean? Surely those bodies must have to comply with directions given by the HRA. I hope the noble Earl will respond to that.