My Lords, in the past I have had the privilege of working with two pharmaceutical companies, a US pharmaceutical company Upjohn and Reckitt pharmaceuticals. I think that as a country we face a unique opportunity at this point caused by Brexit and a situation where we have a major industry which has all the potential to be a world leader. But this point in time is going to go away unless we act. This is a watershed Bill. It creates an opportunity to enhance the role of the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The industry and all of us should want the UK to be an attractive market for investment in medicines, medical devices and therapies for all our UK patients. It creates an opportunity to make significant improvements in UK clinical research environments and, very importantly, it increases the commercial trial activity to make the UK the number one destination for life sciences supporting UK public health.
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This is a real opportunity but, as other noble Lords have said, there is a mish-mash of no end of Bills that need to be consolidated. I support what the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said. Having worked with two of these major pharmaceutical companies and sat down with their lawyers, as I have in the past, particularly in the days of PPRS, if you are in industry you realise that there is so much legislation to be so careful about. Consolidation therefore should be taken very seriously.
Sitting here this afternoon, I do not actually know what the right procedure should be. However, having been in the other place, I am very wary of Law Commission Bills. They do not have a history of working quickly and still do not necessarily result in something positive happening on the ground in the context in which they are working. I urge my noble friend on the Front Bench to sit down with, among others, the ABPI and the other leading authorities involved in this industry to talk about how we can get consolidation put together. That way, anybody thinking of investing in the life sciences in the UK will realise that we have a well-organised ship. They will know that they can choose the area where their own expertise is, and exactly what the situation is there.
As for sunset clauses, I have never been in favour of them in what I would call the creative part of industry. It seems that they usually do not work because the nature of this industry is that some developments take years and years to come to fruition. The market changes. Gosh, we have just had a prime case history in Covid-19,
to which the world has responded—and, in particular, our people have responded. But even now, we do not know the answer to all the different phases of it. So I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will recognise, as I am sure he does, that we have an absolute watershed Bill here, creating a huge opportunity for our country. However, personally I would not put a sunset clause in. I would like to see some work done, particularly to have consultations with industry on which consolidated legislation would really work.