My Lords, I shall try to be brief, otherwise we will be here until 3 am, and I am sure none of us want that. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, in the comments she has made, and I support her amendment and the government amendments. I also agree that the system should be mandatory— not “may” but “shall”— and aligned with the similar system in the United States which I was used to many years ago.
To try to explore this further with the industry, I have been in correspondence with the ABPI to test how committed it is to agreeing to this being mandatory and that they “shall report” in all aspects. I will read what it sent me:
“ABPI are supportive of the intention to move to a mandatory model of disclosure for payments made between industry and relevant individuals including Health Professionals, and”
all healthcare organisations and research institutions. It continues:
“We believe proposals to introduce a legislative mandate are an opportunity to further strengthen the pharmaceutical sector’s existing transparency mechanism for branded medicines”—
that was the point I made to it, that its system needs to be transparent, mandatory and easily accessible by patients and the public. It goes on:
“Our briefing outlines a number of considerations and learnings based on ABPI’s experience running Disclosure UK, which since 2016 has supported transparency around transfers of value made by the innovative pharmaceutical industry to relevant individuals including Health Professionals … and Healthcare Organisations”.
I asked for a similar comment from industries that market medical devices, and I understand that a similar commitment is made by those companies too.
I therefore support the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and support the Government’s amendment. However, I hope that the Minister can confirm that the loose word “may” is not intentional and they intend to make this mandatory.