Well, now I have been retired, I can out myself as Geoffrey Lay, a pharmacist who started work in hospitals, moved to small pharmaceutical manufacturers, had spells of work in community pharmacies and ended up as an assessor in the Medicine Control Agency, later to become the MHRA.
(see Twitter @GeofLay if you really need a visual depiction of me!)
You may know the MHRA as the body that approved the vaccine a week or so ahead of the EMA
Our Trade Unions contacted the minister outlining these concerns:
The response was perhaps typical of the way Governments now act, in that they pretend not to have any responsibility for the agencies they control:
I also wrote to my MP - sorry I don't have a copy as I presume I deleted it as I had to declare that I deleted all MHRA documentation as I left the agency. However, it was based on a Prospect template letter and I pointed out that the prospect of staff reductions at a time of re-organistion and computer updates would almost certainly result in delays in assessment and as a consequence the pharmaceutical industry would respond by only submitting 'reliance' applications, that is they would first gain an EU authoriatsion and then, based on that, request the MHRA to have a copy of the European authorisation - this is not 'taking back control'.
Helen Grant MP responded:
