Another One Bites the Dust: The Demise of the Off-Patent Drugs Bill

Today's article is from our chairman Robin Daly highlighting some important issues and his views surrounding the Off-Patents Drugs Bill.

 Last Friday, Tory Health Minister Alistair Burt used a blatantly unethical tactic - filibustering -  to deliberately block a bill with massive potential to help a wide range of chronic disease and to slash NHS costs. The human cost alone of the suffering that is the direct consequence of this action is sufficient to brand it as callous, inhumane and inexcusable. The description levelled at Alistair Burt was ‘disgraceful’. His ‘assurance’ that there is ‘another pathway’ surely is a way of saying that there is another pathway that won’t have any negative impact on the bottom line of the party’s influential friends - the pharmaceutical giants? For what other plausible explanation can be imagined for blocking such a common-sense, practical and direct path to relieving human suffering.