Lord Saatchi’s Medical Innovation Bill is coming back – but it won’t help cancer patients

What makes for bad legislation? Sometimes it is a lack of scrutiny from a weak opposition and bored backbenchers. Sometimes it’s an attempt by ministers to make a political point and to hell with any real life damage. And sometimes it’s wishful thinking: an assumption that because a bill has identified an awful problem, it is automatically also presenting the perfect solution.

Lord Saatchi’s Medical Innovation Bill is heading back to Parliament again, after the Lib Dems managed to block it in the last session. Saatchi was naturally furious that Nick Clegg’s party had refused to sign off on his legislation, and now that the Lib Dems are out of government, he’s trying again.

Saatchi drew up this legislation after the death of his wife, Josephine Hart, from ovarian cancer. His Bill is undoubtedly born from grief and a desire to do something to stop very sick people dying if there is something that can be done to save them.