20 Greenacre Court
Lancaster
LA1 4LE
Eric Ollerenshaw MP
House of Commons,
London,
SW1A 0AA
19th August 2010
Dear Eric,
I am writing with regard to my ongoing efforts to bring to light the scale of addiction to prescription drugs and the culpability of the pharmaceutical companies involved, and systemic flaws and complacency in our licensing and enforcement agency, the MHRA. I wish also to focus attention on the complete lack of action on behalf of the Department of Health who still refuse to accept any responsibility and seek to deflect public concern by downgrading the problem to a local issue.
As you are aware I have corresponded with the Dept and the MHRA and also more recently the Royal College of General Practitioners; during the period since our first meeting in March I have been collecting evidence and now wish to escalate my concerns using the Dept’s complaints procedure. I asked you in my last communication whether you would ask the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to investigate the matter on my behalf. I rang them today and here is the situation as it stands regarding complaints:
- If you ring the Dept of Health and ask for the complaints office you are informed there isn’t one; any complaints by mail or email go to a central pool and are answered by an allocated Complaints Officer who could well be an employee working in the same office as the person whose responses you were questioning.
- If you escalate this to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman they are only allowed to investigate issues relating to how the Dept handled your complaint and not with policy issues. If you wish to question policy then you have to write to your MP.
- If an MP queries policy issues with the Health Minister then their office sends it back to the Dept to answer on their behalf thus ending at the point of origin.
- The MHRA’s complaints procedure excludes licensing and enforcement decisions; you also cannot take these further, because the MHRA is outside the jurisdiction of the PHSO.
In reality this means that public concerns raised with regard to drug safety will never be investigated by an independent body. I am asking your advice as to how I now proceed.
Yours Sincerely
John Perrott
CCs:
Anne Milton MP Minister for Health – Your response please