I am grateful to my noble friend for that thoughtful and helpful response. I will say three things. First, thank you for the opportunity to be consulted as the future PPRS structure is developed. I very much appreciate that.
Secondly, on freedom of pricing and introduction, it does not necessarily follow that putting into the legislation the criteria that Ministers should take into account in so far as they exercise their powers has a
direct impact. That might be done, as I described, through the mechanism of modulating the rebate, which would not impact on the freedom of pricing and introduction.
My third point is that I did not invent value-based pricing. I may have advocated it for some considerable time—probably 10 years now—but it was advocated before I took it up by the OECD in a wide-ranging report on pharmaceutical pricing internationally and by the Office of Fair Trading in its review of the previous PPRS.