It is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the hon. Members for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) and for Bosworth (Dr Evans). I agree with everything they said.
I welcome this Bill and the steps that will be taken to improve patient safety and the availability of medicines and medical devices. I will keep my comments short today, as I hope to be further involved in the Bill’s later stages. There are some key points to make on Second Reading, however, as the Bill has the potential to affect so many people’s lives, both domestically and abroad.
As we all know, patient safety is vital and should not be compromised. Sadly, we have seen patient safety standards disregarded in the cases of valproate, Primodos and surgical mesh, which shows a clear need for the legislation in this area to be tightened. The experience of those patients shows the life-changing effect that medicines and medical devices can have on people if they are not thoroughly tested—a medical intervention designed to drastically improve a patient’s quality of life can, instead, leave them in a more dire situation.
We not only need to be aware of, and have concern for, patients in our own nation when we look at the medicines entering our national health service; we must also ensure that due care is given to the patients involved in the development of those medicines. We cannot sacrifice the health, rights and dignity of other human beings just to gain medicines for people in our country.
When we look to China, for example, we see that the evidence supplied by the independent China tribunal, which was released in full yesterday, overwhelmingly shows that organs have been harvested from unwilling political prisoners and prisoners of conscience such as members of Falun Gong and the Uyghur Muslims.