Medicines Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to Part 2, the debate on clauses 11 to 13, “Other amendments”, and the Schedule. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to specifically refer to the Associate Minister of Health’s Amendment Paper, which was not considered by the Health Committee. I’d like to take the opportunity to ask the Minister to engage in some back and forth, if we may, on the content of this amendment.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Encouraged by the Chair.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Minister, what does your amendment do? [Member knocks over her glass of water]

Look, I realise that the Chamber can get exciting at this time of night! The amendment simply allows a promoter of a medical conference—you can imagine a place where the primary audience is people who are registered as clinicians under the health practitioners assurance legislation. If you’re holding such a conference, then you can get consent to advertise medicines that are not currently consented by Medsafe. The reason that you would want to do that is that clinicians go to these sorts of conferences, in part, precisely because they would like to find out about medicines that are new. Presently, our laws actually forbid those medicines being advertised, and the practical result of that is that doctors—I even happen to know some—go to nice places like Fiji or Noosa, to go to these conferences and learn about the latest and best medicines emerging in the world, and they take their money with them. I’ve seen one estimate, and, if I recall off the top of my head, the net benefit to New Zealand of allowing these medical conferences to happen here in New Zealand will be around about $90 million.

It’s very simple. We’re aligning our rules with the places that New Zealand doctors are currently going. So, instead of going to Noosa or Fiji, they can stay somewhere nice, like Auckland, and learn about new medicines.

In the spirit of back and forth, thank you to the Associate Minister of Health for that answer. Why is the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act used to define professions or regulated practitioners in the Act? Their conferences are the ones that are covered by this amendment. Why is that done and is it relevant to the operation of this clause that in an international conference, many visitors from overseas won’t be regulated by that Act, because they will be registered overseas?

First of all, why would we use the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act? Because that is the piece of legislation in New Zealand that defines the professions that you might think of: doctors, clinicians, the kinds of people that you would imagine you would want to learn about new medicines. It seems like a tidy way to do it.

The member is correct that there might be people coming from overseas inbound to learn about medicines at conferences in New Zealand, but I would interpret this as those people are people who come under the same professions and, indeed, would be regulated under that Act if they were in New Zealand. Of course, in this instance, they wouldn’t be, but they’re equivalents. They just happen to be from overseas.

Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Mr Chair, just to conclude this—

Dr Ayesha Verrall—I’ll facilitate this.

This concern about medical conferences was raised in the course of the last Parliament’s debate on the Therapeutic Products Bill, so can the Minister explain why this amendment has appeared in the bill now? Why wasn’t it in the original bill that was drafted and considered and went to select committee? Why did the Minister’s intention with respect to this concern, which has been well known for some time, change? Perhaps the Minister would like to elaborate on the prospects of a medicinal products bill. Has the prospect of a medicinal products bill passing in this Parliament declined, and is that why this amendment is going through with this bill?

Well, first of all, I regularly receive praise for having a range of fine qualities, but not in this sense. So why would we not put this in the bill initially? Because we were preparing a bill primarily for the purpose for the rule of two. Once it was brought to my attention that it would be useful for New Zealand clinicians to be able to have medical conferences with advertised medicines in New Zealand, I made a judgment that it was well worth enabling that at the earlier opportunity, which is this bill.

The Minister—it’s not really part of this debate; if she wants to speculate if there is now not going to be a medical products bill. I wouldn’t speak for my colleague Casey Costello, who has that responsibility, but I wouldn’t underestimate her either.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Some follow-up questions on the amendment which, Ayesha Verrall noted, was introduced without select committee scrutiny.

I noted that the Associate Minister of Health mentioned that such conferences—if I heard correctly—were to bring $90 million to the country. Can I just test where that figure came from, and who produced the analysis on that amount of money? Also whether, as part of that, there was any distributional analysis of, I guess, where that money goes into in terms of who benefits from that?

The other question I had in relationship to the amendment was that it seems to me like this is obviously something that had been considered for a while, but can the Minister list the range of stakeholders or entities that have been consulted, if at all, to prepare this amendment? Because, again, we’ve heard feedback from the Minister in his initial remarks around some of the bodies which he talked about wanting this, but can I check what official engagements happened to produce this amendment, if any? Also, additionally, at what dates did the Minister start the work to prepare this amendment, because that’s an important part of the question in relationship to Ayesha Verrall’s point, which is that if this had been considered for quite some time, why was this not flagged at the select committee stage?

To recap, I’m interested to know where the $90 million figure came from; the distributional analysis for benefits; additionally, the list of stakeholders or entities that were consulted; as well as the issue of the date that the Minister started to prepare this amendment.

A follow-up question on that would be in relationship to the list of stakeholders and entities that would have been consulted with: did he receive any feedback on which regional centres in our country are most likely to benefit from these medical conferences, if at all?

As I said at the time, the $90 million was a figure off the top of my head. I’m not relying on that to justify this change, and I don’t want to start quoting if I might misquote, but it is a figure that I’ve heard and share in candour with the committee.

As far as the distributional analysis is concerned, I also don’t have that. I only have the headline figure. In terms of consultation, I haven’t directly consulted people with this. I’ve had it proposed—the ministry’s recommended it—and I believe that if we can remove a restriction that will make sure that people can do more to make New Zealand a wealthier and more interesting place, then we should do that.

In terms of the date, I started thinking about it. I couldn’t give you an exact date off the top of my head but I’d be happy to talk to the member later, if he is really interested in that.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m a little bit concerned to hear that the $90 million was kind of made up on the spot. I guess the question I had in relationship to that—or from the top of his head—is whether he asked any Government body to do some analysis on that figure? I can totally accept that, maybe, he just doesn’t have a thought in his head, but I do want to know whether he actually asked his officials to explore exactly how much revenue it could bring. It’s OK if that figure is not in front of him, but I do want to ask whether that question was part of the process to get this amendment sorted.

The reason why I ask this is because the bill, so far, has had quite constructive cross-party consensus. I would hope that this amendment and the way that this is presented also seeks to do that very same thing. But without having clarity of exactly the robust analysis that was being made from the Associate Minister of Health to corroborate, for example, the amount of revenue it could bring to the country, it’s hard for us to be able to quantify the benefits of this amendment.

To recap, I’m interested to know if he did actually ask for any advice on the amount of money such an amendment and these medical conferences could bring to the country, and, if he did not commission such advice, then what basis is he using to get to a point where he feels confident about the amount of money that such an amendment will bring to the country?

I can only repeat my previous comment. The justification for this does not rely on any specific figure. If it was $9 million, $90 million, or $900 million, it costs next to nothing to do, and it increases people’s freedom to do as they please within New Zealand so long as there are no risks to others, and, therefore, we should do it.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Motion agreed to.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments set out on Amendment Paper 425 be agreed to.