Northern Ireland: Supply of Medicines

Debate between Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate and Lord Frost

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, as I said in answer to an earlier question, medicines are a special case of the general issue of supply of goods into Northern Ireland. As the protocol covers that general issue, it includes medicines. It has created special difficulties that we are trying to resolve.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, on the supply of medicines, I understand that one issue in these negotiations is that there is further information which apparently is not being provided to the UK Government. Could my noble friend elucidate on this a bit more because, obviously, we all want agreement to be achieved as soon as possible?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that in an area as technical and complicated as this, it is obviously essential that we have full access to all the detail, all the potential legislation and all the potential guidance issued. At the moment, we do not have that. We have not been able to see it all, but I hope that we might be able to do so before too long. It is obviously not possible for us to reach agreement unless we have access to that level of detail.