My Lords, I have added my name to the set of amendments and strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, said.
The Minister is new to this legislation. He has joined the party a little late on the Bill. I ask him to stand back and look at some of the terminology used in it. It skips lightly through about four different terms: health service medicines, medicinal products, medical supplies and health service products. It zigzags in and out of those terms throughout the Bill. It then gives a set of definitions at the end which, on the most
generous interpretation, overlap with each other. So we are imposing new obligations on a whole set of people in and around the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry without being very clear which group of products we are most concerned about. We are taking powers in the Bill to put obligations on all suppliers of those products to keep a lot of information in case the Government should at some point in future call on them to provide it. That does not seem to me a sound basis on which to legislate when we are trying to reduce the regulatory burden on not just small but medium-sized companies. We always talk about the small companies, but Amendment 19 is useful because it involves reducing the burden on medium-sized companies as well.
The impact assessment then adds to the problem by giving no idea of the impact of these provisions on those companies. At least these amendments narrow the focus where there is an acknowledged problem—medicinal products—which is where the Bill started. If you read the Long Title, it looks as though it started as a Bill about medicines to which someone has tacked on “and related issues”, or similar words. I suspect that the Bill started off trying to deal with a genuine problem but has grown just in case it might be helpful to have some other provisions. Then, to add unnecessary complexity, it has moved around on what products are to be covered to the point where we are putting obligations on a very large number of organisations in case the Government come calling for information.
That is why I shall return to this subject when we come to Amendment 33, which tries, at the very least, to put some obligation on the Secretary of State to show that he has good reason for requiring the information sought in this Bill. That is a debate for another day, but the Minister should look very carefully at whether the Bill has a confusing set of definitions and a use of words that is going to cause a lot of confusion for the world outside.
7.15 pm