My Lords, I hope that the Committee will be unanimous in support of these regulations and their objective. I have no reservation in saying that these regulations perform a laudable function. They ensure that pharmaceutical companies in Great Britain can continue to produce and sell certain medicines to developing countries at a low cost to help fight key diseases such as HIV and malaria without the potential drawback of these medicines being reimported into Great Britain for sale at a price lower than the domestic market price.
As noble Lords will recognise, many of the poorest developing countries are in urgent need of access to affordable essential medicines for the treatment of communicable diseases. These countries are heavily dependent on imports of medicines because local manufacturing may be limited. Price segmentation between developing and developed countries is necessary to ensure that the poorest developing countries have access to essential pharmaceutical products at heavily reduced prices, while also ensuring that fair market prices in wealthier markets incentivise drug development and investment.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers will produce large volumes of pharmaceutical products at reduced prices for the developing world only if they are assured that these products will not find a way into developed countries’ markets. These regulations correct deficiencies in legislation to establish a procedure that identifies the products, countries and diseases covered and prevents the reimport of such products through seizing and disposing in accordance with national legislation.
These regulations were laid in draft before this House on 2 September. They are made under powers in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2020. The Committee knows that, given the context, those powers
are limited. All that they allow is the correction of technical deficiencies in existing EU law that, by the operation of the Act, were retained in UK law following withdrawal. These regulations correct such deficiencies by, for example, replacing references to the European Union, its institutions and legislation with the appropriate UK references.
This statutory instrument follows the affirmative procedure because it transfers to the Secretary of State a power that currently sits with the European Commission. That is a power to amend the list of pharmaceutical products under the regulations and the criteria for products to remain on that list. This statutory instrument also replaces the requirement that pharmaceutical products, packaging and connected documents should be affixed with an EU logo with a power for the Secretary of State to make regulations providing for marking, labelling or other identification requirements. This relates to a logo more appropriate for the UK now that we have left the European Union. I beg to move.
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