Current Petitions

PE1108, by Tina McGeever, is on access to cancer treatment drugs. The discussion will also focus on the health rights information leaflet from the health directorate that the clerk circulated to us last week. Members also have a copy of a revised letter relating to the report that we made on the petition. I invite the clerk to address that.

The committee will recall that, at its previous meeting, it considered a draft of the guidance from the Government. Members made a number of comments. Principally, they did not think that the guidance was particularly binding on health boards, and they also raised an issue to do with the deadlines specified in the guidance by which health boards had to report back. Helpfully, the Scottish Government has taken on board all the committee’s comments and suggests that the current version of the guidance is more binding on health boards, which it is hoped will be helpful. The draft letter sets that out. It also touches on the health rights information leaflet that was sent to us last week, which was the first time that the committee had seen it. That stemmed from the committee’s report, to which the cabinet secretary referred in the statement that she made to Parliament in March last year. The leaflet has not been sent to the committee for comment; it has come to it for information only. However, I suggest in the draft letter one or two issues that you may wish to raise with the cabinet secretary, and they are set out on page 3 of that letter.

A lot of progress has been made, thanks to the petitioner and the work of the committee in co-operation with the Scottish Government, which is very welcome. I take on board the fact that the guidance has now been tightened up, which is also welcome. However, we should highlight in the revised draft letter one or two areas of the information leaflet that need to be reconsidered. We will come back to the matter if the cabinet secretary agrees to what is in your letter, as we hope that she will, on 1 November 2010. There will then be progress reports from national health service boards in March 2011. On that basis, we should keep the petition open and welcome the progress that has been made.

I agree with what Bill Butler says. However, I have had contact today from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, which feels that a key question that was raised in our letter of 2 March has not yet been addressed—namely, how do the area drug and therapeutics committees appraise which medicines are deemed equivalent, and how do we ensure that there is openness and visibility around those decisions and that the equivalent medicines are named so that patients and clinicians are aware of which should be used in place of a Scottish Medicines Consortium-accepted medicine? The ABPI feels that that is a key question.

Okay, we can incorporate that in the letter if you give us the detail of that observation. We guarantee that, once we have formalised the letter, all members of the committee will receive a copy for comment.

Yes, we can do that.

Just as a courtesy to everybody who has been involved. We will continue with the petition and draft a letter to go to the appropriate health minister.