Dr Scott Arthur

I rise to oppose the amendments, but I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for tabling them, for engaging with the Bill and for our conversation yesterday, which I really appreciated. I understand the stated intent of the proposals, although I am not minded to support them. Over the last 10 months, I have held dozens of meetings with families, survivors, sufferers, charities, clinicians and legal experts, all with the aim of delivering meaningful change in this field. Those meetings were not so that I could tell people about the Bill, but so that those people could shape the Bill. I fear that if we were to pass these amendments, they would upset the delicate balance of hopes and aspirations that underpins the Bill. It is not just about the Minister, as the hon. Member suggested; there is a whole coalition of people who have different opinions about the Bill, and I do not think any one person has a right to change it in that way, including me. That would be hugely disrespectful and a disappointment to that coalition, but I understand the hon. Member’s points. The Minister will go through the amendments in turn, so I will focus on three key ones. The review of orphan drugs was one of the hardest-fought things in the negotiations with the Department and charities, but we found a point that we could all agree on. I appreciate that the hon. Member wants it to go further, and perhaps we could speculate about the outcome and better prepare for it, but it is much awaited by the charities and they are grateful for it. I do not want to speak on their behalf, but that is what I have heard from them. That covers amendments 1 and 2. Amendment 5 is about the definition of a rare cancer, which is an aspect of the Bill that I have not spoken about in any great detail, so it is worth touching on here. The Bill sets the definition of a rare cancer in statute and aligns it with the definition of a rare disease, which is a useful simplification. In future, let us hope that some conditions fall out of that “rare” specification and need less emphasis, and let us also hope that people in the Department look at the treatments that are being developed inside and outside the UK. It is right that there should be a bit of flexibility at the edges of what the Department considers a rare cancer. The timeline of the review is three years. Again, we spent a great deal of time talking about that. For some while, it was going to be much longer than three years, and all of us want it to be much shorter, but that was the compromise we reached—it was like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. We reached that compromise together, so I urge the hon. Member to respect our negotiations on that issue.