In the parliament before May’s election the College had been instrumental in amending Lord Saatchi’s original Medical Innovation Bill and lobbying Liberal Democrat MPs who withdrew their support for the legislation.

After the election the now majority Conservative government decided to support a new version brought forward as a private member’s bill by Tory backbench MP Chris Heaton-Harris.

The Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill (AMTIB) has two parts. The first, taken straight from Lord Saatchi’s original Bill stated: 'It is not negligent for a doctor to depart from the existing range of accepted medical treatments for a condition if the decision to do so is taken responsibly.'

After lobbying, led by the College, of members of the House of Commons Bill committee including Mr Heaton-Harris, the MP has agreed to amend the Bill to remove this section.

The College co-ordinated the writing of a letter to MPs from patient, medical and medico-legal groups which said: “The Bill would allow doctors to ‘depart from the existing range of accepted medical treatments’ as long as they obtained the view of another doctor, however, they would not have to take the advice of the second doctor nor would they have to obtain independent peer review. This opens the possibility of ‘unacceptable’ treatments being carried out without any proper checks, which is contrary to the principles of valuing and promoting informed patient choice and good, evidence-based scientific practice.”

After MPs on the Bill committee raised this point, Mr Heaton-Harris agreed to remove this section.

The remaining section, enabling the Secretary of State to create a register of ‘medical innovations’, is going forward for the time being but concerns remain that this register could  recognise individual ‘successes’ without requiring any long-term follow up to check for side-effects and undermine good quality assurance.

The College will be seeking further amendments as the Bill progresses through Parliament.