At best nothing has changed since 2004/5 - at worst the MHRA is even more under control of the pharmaceutical companies
Not even Parliamentary Committee oversight is working to change things, just like with the Statutory Instruments committee and the "covid" legislation
From 2004/5 - nothing changed since then except for the worst:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
House of Commons
Health Committee
The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry
Fourth Report of Session 2004–05
Some pretty damning stuff in the 126 pages such as:
However, there are disadvantages in the increasing use of and reliance on medicines. The inappropriate or excessive use of medicines can cause distress, ill-health, hospitalisation and even death. Adverse drug reactions are responsible for about 5% of all admissions to hospitals in the UK.
An effective regulatory regime to ensure that the industry works in the public interest is essential. Unfortunately, the present regulatory system is failing to provide this.
The Department of Health has for too long optimistically assumed that the interests of health and of the industry are as one. This may reflect the fact that the Department sponsors the industry as well as looking after health. The result is that the industry has been left to its own devices for too long.
The consequences of lax oversight is that the industry’s influence has expanded and a number of practices have developed which act against the public interest
And that’s just the first 2 pages of the summary - it gets worse as it goes on.
So if Parliament cannot get the regulators to change nor improve who can?
As a recap here’s the report by the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Statutory Instruments on the UK Government’s use of them for making “covid” legislation:
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/4492/documents/45243/default/
What is interesting is section 3.3:
The Committee asked the Department for Health and Social Care to confirm that the “rules” relating to limited exercise, local travel, social distancing and shopping only for basic necessities amount to non-statutory advice or guidance that is not legally enforceable. In a memorandum published at Appendix 3, the Department confirms that this is the case. The Committee remains concerned that guidance continues to be used in the context of the emergency pandemic response in a way that appears to purport to impose more severe restrictions than are imposed by law. The “new rules” were widely reported before the Regulations were published and have been the focus of public and media attention. The Committee is concerned that many readers will not readily appreciate the distinction in rule of law terms between provisions of regulations and paragraphs in government guidance; and a statement such as “the law will be updated to reflect these new rules” is likely to add to the confusion by suggesting exact correspondence between the “rules” (which are not in fact rules but guidance) and the law. The Committee considered it important to have confirmed on the record that a number of specific provisions of the guidance, despite being described by Ministers as “rules” and using imperative language, are in fact no more than guidance , and accordingly reports the Regulations for requiring elucidation, provided in the Department’s memorandum. (their highlighting)