My Lords, we also have an amendment in this group, Amendment 49, providing for regulations under Clause 10 to give exemptions from an offence under this Bill—and from its ban—for specific medical research activity. Of course, a number of noble Lords raised concerns at Second Reading about the impact of the ban on new psychoactive substances and the creation of an offence on medical research. We do not want the Bill to inhibit or restrict important medical research that will help us to improve our knowledge of drugs and their impact, and I do not believe that that is the Government’s intention.
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Clause 10 would appear to provide a means to ensure that proper medical research can be exempt from the consequential effects of the ban on psychoactive substances in the Bill, and our amendment refers to appropriate regulations being laid before both Houses to achieve this goal. We need to hear from the Government how they intend to give assurance that legitimate research will not be inhibited or restricted by the terms of this Bill, and how any processes or procedures for enabling medical research to be exempt from an offence under the Bill would work in practice.
The report of the Constitution Committee refers to Clause 10 authorising the Secretary of State,
“to specify excepted acts”,
from a defence under the Bill,
“by making regulations”.
The committee stated that the House might,
“wish to consider whether it is appropriate to confer such a broad power on the Secretary of State, and in particular whether it should be unconstrained by any textual indication as to the purpose or purposes for which it may be exercised”.
Our amendment inserts a specific requirement in Clause 10 in respect of medical research activity.
The Constitution Committee also drew attention to the fact that,
“the details of the excepted-acts regime are … absent from the Bill”,
unlike the exempted-substances regime. It says:
“Whether any such regime is in fact established and, if so, on what terms are instead matters that are wholly for the Secretary of State to determine … The House may wish to consider whether it is appropriate to leave the details of the excepted-acts regime to be determined wholly through secondary legislation”.
I assume from an earlier debate that that is an issue that the Government will consider in the light of the report from the Constitution Committee.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, the Secretary of State has received a letter from a number of major organisations involved in, or associated with, medical and scientific research, expressing concern about the Bill’s potential unintended consequences for medical research and asking that the final draft does not pose a barrier to important scientific work, both in neuroscience and in other areas. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to show in her response that the Government will take the necessary action to address those concerns, and that we do not end up with a Bill that could be interpreted as leaving researchers open to the possibility of prosecution.