Current Petitions

The final petition that we will be considering today—and indeed this session—is PE1108, by Tina McGeever, on behalf of Mike Gray, on the provision of the drug cetuximab across national health service boards. I seek members’ views on the petition.

The petition was one of those that was referred to in the recent debate in Parliament on the work of the Public Petitions Committee, and for good reason because it has had considerable effect. We have come to the end of what we, as a committee, can do, but in closing the petition we should state clearly and for the record that positive action has been taken as a result of the petition and the committee’s inquiry, including the issuing of revised guidance to NHS boards on the arrangements for NHS patients receiving health care services through private health care arrangements. That has provided a framework to support decisions concerning the possible combination of elements of NHS and private care for individual patients. Importantly, the Scottish Government, following the workshops organised by the Scottish Medicines Consortium in May 2010, is developing good, proactive guidance to NHS boards on individual patient treatment requests. Further, the SMC is developing a statement on quality-adjusted life-year methodology, which is being peer reviewed by its patient and public involvement group for comment on the statement’s language, content and presentation. The letter of 13 February 2011 from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing sets out the many positive actions that are being taken forward by the Scottish Government as a result of the petition. Importantly, it makes the point that monitoring of the new processes and chief executive letter framework will be undertaken by it through various mechanisms that it has in place with NHS boards. Where there is evidence to suggest that boards are not implementing the guidance, it will be vigorously investigated. I am sure that the committee would like to reflect not only on the positive actions of the Scottish Government but on the indispensable input of the petitioner, Tina McGeever, on behalf of her husband, the late Mike Gray. Without the petitioner and the energy of both individuals directly involved, we would not be seeing the real improvements that I am sure the petition will effect throughout Scotland in respect of patients accessing newly licensed medicines, in the process for considering objectively individual patient treatment requests and in the arrangements for the combination of care that is available to patients. Finally, we should reflect on the fact that all of those real improvements for people throughout Scotland have been effected through the simple process of lodging a petition. The petitioner should take great pride in that.

I am sure that there is agreement around the table with those views. Congratulations to Tina McGeever on what she has achieved.I suspend the meeting briefly before we move on to item 2, which is on the committee’s annual report.17:27 Meeting suspended.

17:35 On resuming—