Therapeutic Products Bill

Members, we come now to Part 5. This is the debate on clauses 151 to 186, “Licences and permits”. The question is that Part 5 be agreed to.

This Part 5 is around licences and permits, and we’ve just got little bit of a concern. Brooke van Velden again has put in a Supplementary Order Paper, 379. This is around clauses 158 and 159 and changing clause 158 by adding, “at least 1 responsible person is ordinarily resident in New Zealand.”

As you can guess, with this many companies, we also have to bring expertise into New Zealand and they may also buy shares in it. We’ve just got a concern to amend this to make sure that the committee reviews that submitter, including supplier of key therapeutic products—that requirement for responsible persons to be ordinarily resident in New Zealand could present a barrier particularly to New Zealand companies in this market, because of that expertise. If we have to have all of them having to be New Zealand citizens, that could slow up a whole lot of things. So we feel that at least one person in there who is responsible and is an original New Zealand resident should meet the criteria, because we don’t want to hold up, again, any of the therapeutic products that we make, and especially when we do have a lot of overseas investment and a lot of overseas expertise that comes here. This is where we just thought there was just a little bit of an overreach around that standard of having responsible people, but we go to a responsible person that’s originally from New Zealand.

We don’t see this undermining things, because, again, we make sure there’s always going to be checks and balances, and because we’re in a small global market we’ve got to be able to make sure that we can meet here, and if we put too many restrictions, even on these companies, it’s making a big thing. That’s why we think that by having at least one that is a New Zealand resident, that should meet those criteria that have been put in here in clause 158 and 159.

So we’d hope that the Government would consider this, because, again, we want to make sure that we can supply products to the rest of the world and we want to make sure that we can have the expertise here. As we all know, it’s a global market, as well as having a lot of people come and go from New Zealand, and these things can change quite quickly, but if we can make sure that’s as easy as possible so that these companies still can operate—and have to make sure that this is at least one, as I said, New Zealand resident.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Perhaps I can clarify for the member who’s just resumed her seat, Toni Severin, that the bill does not require that every person who works for a licence holder be a responsible person; rather, secondary legislation will specify the terms of a licence and can include how many responsible persons are required. There might be some situations where multiple people are required—for example, where activity is conducted across multiple sites; for example, manufacturing or clinical trials that occur at multiple hospitals. So we want to balance flexibility with certainty. For the reasons outlined above, we don’t believe the amendment is necessary.

The question is that Brooke van Velden’s amendments set out in Supplementary Order Paper 379 be agreed to.