Stop the Saatchi Bill

Driven by an extraordinary two-year PR campaign on social media and a supportive newspaper partner, this all started as Lord Saatchi’s Medical Innovation Bill, metamorphosed through several versions, and was resurrected under a new name by Chris Heaton-Harris, before finally clearing its last hurdle in the Lords this week to become the Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Act. Pretty much the only thing they share is the word 'Innovation' in the title.

One day, it may be possible for politicians to ask the people who actually work in the medical field: what are the problems you face, and how can we help you overcome them?

One day, politicians may actually listen to the answers they receive, and thus try to tackle genuine problems rather than imagined ones.

One day, politicians, medics, researchers, lawyers, patient groups, charities, and the public, may work together to overcome the barriers to the development and provision of new treatments.

But it is not this day.

Read more: Not this day

A Dangerous Game

In its tacit support for the Saatchi Bill, the Department of Health is playing with patient safety

Let me take this opportunity, on the question of the Government’s support, to reiterate that this is a private Member’s Bill. This is not a Government Bill.

— George Freeman MP, Adjournment Debate on Medical Innovation Bill, 9th December 2014

To the casual observer, it may seem as though Lord Saatchi’s Medical Innovation Bill (the “Saatchi Bill”), which met with widespread opposition in the last Parliament, was not a Private Member’s Bill, but was in all but name a Government Bill. It had the benefit of a Department of Health consultation (even if Lord Saatchi did not wait for its conclusions to be published before driving the Bill through the Lords). Government Ministers turned up to speak on its behalf in both Houses. The Department of Health and Lord Saatchi operated as a tag team in the Lords debate, working together to shepherd through the amendments Saatchi wanted, while deflecting those he didn’t. The Saatchi Bill team’s own website even described their relationship with the Department of Health as a “one-team philosophy.”

As the Bill returns in this Parliament, both in its original form as Lord Saatchi’s “Medical Innovation Bill”, and simultaneously as the near-identical “Access to Treatments (Innovation) Bill”, sponsored by Chris Heaton-Harris, the relationship is as close as ever. The Department of Health drafted Heaton-Harris’ new Bill, though given its substantial similarity to Saatchi’s Bill it cannot have overly taxed their draftspeople, and it wrote the explanatory notes nowpublished on the Parliament website. They don’t seem to find it at all odd that there are now two near-identical Bills working their way through Parliament in opposite directions.

Opposition

The Saatchi Bill received strong opposition in the last Parliament, from medical organisations, patient protection groups, legal experts and medical charities. The National Assembly for Wales unanimously voted against it. The opponents are once again lining up this week to condemn Heaton-Harris’ latest version. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have called it “disastrous” and “a real danger to the safety of infants, children and young people in England and Wales.” The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, representing more than 11,000 members in England and Wales, say that it “is likely to be of primary interest to those practitioners seeking respectability for their unethical treatments.” The Royal College of Surgeons say they “unequivocally oppose” it. The BMA “strongly question necessity & desirability of introducing statute to clarify or change the law in this area.” The chief executive of the Patients Association calls it “ill-judged, dangerous and unnecessary.”

Put simply, the Bill attempts to armour-plate a doctor’s treatment decisions so they cannot be sued for negligence, and the supposed safeguards are ineffectiveat making sure those treatment decisions are sound.

So why would the Department of Health lend such assistance to this Bill, when it is so widely opposed? If the medical and legal professions are united in saying something is a bad idea, one would normally expect that opposition to be listened to, but the Department of Health are sailing blithely on. Why? It’s clear even to outsiders that the Department of Health’s relationship with the medical profession is less that of inspiring leader and more that of angry, abusive jailer, but this is in itself perhaps not sufficient to explain their riding roughshod over the objections of medical experts.

The cost of negligence

The answer can perhaps be found in the original document that was published when the Department of Health launched its consultation on the Bill last spring. This document devoted a section to discussing the cost of negligence litigation. The Saatchi Bill campaign team tweeted on the subject, drawing a clear link between innovation and litigation, and along the way creatively inflating the litigation bill from £1.24bn to £24bn. The clear implication of all this is that here there is an opportunity to reduce the NHS’ legal costs.

Now, it may make sense to discuss the cost of litigation when consulting on a Bill whose purpose is to prevent patients who have been harmed by experimental treatment from suing their doctors, but what the Department of Health did not attempt to do was describe how much litigation arose from such experimental treatment. Without knowing this, it’s impossible to know if the Bill could save money.

We can find out, because the bodies who have to indemnify and defend doctors when they are sued know exactly how much litigation arising from “innovative treatment” costs. It’s zero. £0.00. The Medical Protection Society, the Medical Defence Union, The British Medical Association and the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges, The NHS Litigation Authority and the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK and many other organisations cannot between them identify a single case of litigation arising from a doctor’s decision to try an innovative treatment.

So why should the Department of Health still look kindly upon this Bill? Well, given that the Bill is deliberately vague about what constitutes “innovative treatment”, and how much protection it could potentially give doctors at the expense of their patients, it is likely that a whole swathe of current practice could be recast as “innovative” in order to gain the protections of the Bill. The majority of current paediatric prescribing, for example, is for medicine that is not licensed for use in children. The use of unlicensed medication is an area the Bill campaign was clear on wanting the Bill to cover. It is entirely possible, then, that the Department of Health are if favour of this Bill because they see the opportunity to drive some treatments outside the reach of the law.

Let’s pause to think through the implications of this for a moment. The Bill can only save on litigation costs by taking some current treatments outside the protection of the law.

The end result

You will have your own views on whether it is a good idea to prevent doctors being sued for bad practice, or to prevent anyone being able to stop them from repeating that bad practice. You will have your own views on whether it is appropriate for somebody who is harmed by the treatment they have received to be compensated with enough money to pay for the long-term care they may now need as a result of that harm. But there is a further problem with any plan to throw whole swathes of patients to the wolves in order to save on litigation costs. Because it may not even reduce the cost of litigation.

Sir Robert Francis QC says of the Department of Health’s consultation document, “The assessment suggests there will be a reduction in medical negligence claims. On the contrary there is likely to be protracted and complex litigation about the meaning of this Bill.” The reason for this is simple. In future, in order to demonstrate negligence, a claimant would first have to show why the Bill did not apply, and only then go on to show why the treatment was negligent. This is clearly a more protracted way of working, and runs the risk of denying people who have been harmed from seeking a remedy.

Whatever the end result, by ushering through these “Private Member’s Bills”, the Department of Health can absolve itself of any responsibility for the fall-out. When the bodies start piling up, the blame will fall on Saatchi and Heaton-Harris. Or so the Department of Health must hope.

We’ll finish with the words of George Freeman MP, speaking on behalf of the Government in the adjournment debate on the Saatchi Bill in the House of Commons last December:

I want to be clear that, as the Bill completes its passage in the House of Lords, I hope it returns to this House in a form that the vast majority of medical opinion and respectable bodies in the medical field feel able to support. It is not our intention to have a Bill that undermines public or patient trust in research medicine.

It is clear that the Bill has not arrived in a form that lives up to Mr. Freeman’s hopes. It is now time for the Government to make good on its promise and stop enabling this execrable Bill.