My reply to the Baroness;s reply about the NHS reforms

Many thanks for your response, especially on a Sunday.

I will endeavour to find an appropriate peer.

Please could I just reiterate my point. Drug pharmaceutical reps have
significant budgets to influence doctors. They didn't aim to influence
commissioners in the old NHS but my personal experience is they
attempted to influence doctors like my dad. They do it because they know
it works. They do it to boost their profits.

There are no protections to stop these drug reps buying influence in the
new NHS and as I've pointed out there can be dangerous consequences,
especially with the reduced accountability of the Secretary of State.

Psychological therapists and patients don't have these huge budgets nor
designed sales people to buy influence in the new NHS. All they have are
the poorly funded mental health charities. (I used to work at Mind so I
know just how poorly funded they are)

Patient safety must always be a priority but the pharmaceutical
companies aren't primarily driven by this goal. They're interested in
profit and they're always looking for new ways to doctors to use their
products. Unfortunately the drugs have have terrible consequences.

1,800 unnecessary deaths every year is a scandal in healthcare. Whatever
the NHS becomes this sort of disaster mustn't happen again. Patients
must be protected from these dangerous drugs which are used out of
convenience rather than for a genuine healthcare objective. The
antipsychotic does not heal dementia nor regrow the brain. In fact
there's evidence to show it reduces brain matter. All the drug did was
make the elderly docile and easier to manage - sort of like if they
gagged the elderly and put them in straitjackets. I believe this would
be immoral but it is effectively what the antipsychotic did, but it
killed many of them much earlier than those who weren't treated in this way.

The old NHS didn't prevent this disaster. Whatever the new NHS is there
must be systems in place to prevent this sort of mass manslaughter
happening.

I implore you to consider the risk to patient safety through the misuse
of mental health treatments.

Thank you again for taking the time to read my views