Dr K. H. JONES (chief executive officer, Medicines Control Agency) replies:
The first point I should like to make is that the recent press coverage related
to members of the Medicines Act advisory committees rather than members of the
Medicines Control Agency itself who are civil servants and are bound by strict
civil service codes of conduct which are stringently applied in all cases.
Members of the Medicines Act advisory committees are required to follow a code
of practice relating to declarations of interests in the pharmaceutical industry.
Both the code and the individual details of members’ interests are published
annually in the advisory bodies’ reports. (“Medicines Act Advisory
Bodies — Annual Reports for 1999” was published in July and is available
from the MCA. These reports are also available on the MCA’s website —
www.open.gov.uk/ mca/mcahome.htm.)
The code specifies different types of interests and how they must be declared
by members, and indicates what action the chairman, advised at each meeting
by a Departmental lawyer, should take in various circumstances. Where, for example,
a member has shares in a company whose product is coming before the committee
for consideration, that “personal” interest is declared and the member
must leave the meeting and cannot take part in the proceedings relating to that
particular product.
Members of the Medicines Act advisory committees are professionals of the highest
standing in their fields (most committees also have lay members). There has
never been any evidence that members have acted other than with the highest
integrity. If any such evidence were presented, it would be taken very seriously
indeed.
The pharmaceutical industry funds much of the research in leading scientific
academic departments and it would not be possible for these committees to have
a membership of the necessary scientific expertise without some members having
interests or having had interests in the past. What matters most is the way
in which those interests are dealt with, and that is the purpose of the code
of practice which is rigorously adhered to. Indeed, you may be aware that the
Medicines Act actually requires the Medicines Commission to have at least one
member with “wide and recent experience of, and shown capacity in”
the pharmaceutical industry. The code of practice followed by these committees
is extremely robust and is fully enforced at each meeting to ensure the integrity
of the advice given to Ministers by those committees.