European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

It is of course a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I did not agree with very much of what he said, but I was trying to imagine him out on the streets, which gave me pause for thought.

Being No. 54 of 190 speakers, there is a possibility that I have might say something that has not been said before. We have heard some wonderful speeches about the defects and gaps in the Bill, and I bow in deference and gratitude to the recommendations of the Constitution Committee, whose report will help us enormously in the next stages of the Bill. But as we all know, only when legislation is applied to real-life issues—the consequences for people, their jobs, families and well-being—will we identify the gaps and unintended consequences. In many ways, like my noble friend Lady Drake, I want to talk about people’s issues. However, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is quite wrong when he says that the Northern Ireland border issue is being exaggerated. My family in Cavan do not agree with him at all. Why would we put in jeopardy the Good Friday agreement?

As the Labour health spokesperson, I will address my remarks to the realities of Brexit for our NHS and research. Like many noble Lords, I too have received briefings from many different sectors and many say the same thing—that their sector needs to remain within European Union regulatory regimes to thrive, and they plead for clarity and certainty about what will happen. That plea echoed around this Chamber in speech after speech today. I am grateful to Cancer Research UK and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry for their work on clinical trials regulation.

The UK has been heavily involved in developing the existing regime, which will harmonise the assessment and supervision process for clinical trials via a central European Union portal and database, currently being set up by the European Medicines Agency. In 2019, the new regime kicks in and this presents a problem of great uncertainty. This means that the clinical trials regulation, the CTR, will not automatically be captured by this Bill. It is not clear whether the UK Government will look to align with the regulation or seek access to the EU portal and database, and in what timescale. As a priority, the Government should immediately provide greater clarity on plans to ensure UK alignment with the EU clinical trials regulation. What specifically will be the mechanism for UK access to the portal and database?

I cannot think of a more potent issue than alignment with the clinical trials regulation when discussing access to innovation and new medicines. Cures for rare and childhood cancers, for example, and rapid UK access to them are at stake. Similarly with drug regulation, when will the Government offer certainty that the UK will have agreement with the EU to ensure we can continue to take part in the EMA’s centralised procedure for drug licensing? Any future drug-licensing system must not exacerbate delays in access to the most innovative treatments for patients in the UK and across the EU. Again, certainty is needed.

Equally, people are at the heart of this Bill—people who work in our health service, both the scientists and the medical staff, who move across the European Union with ease at present. Can we be confident that the Home Office will design a future immigration system that enables us to attract, recruit and retain global scientific talent at all professional levels, regardless of their nationality, and the nursing and other medical staff who enable our NHS to function?

And what about the patients? I know and welcome the good intention of the Government to continue some version of the European Health Insurance Card, which symbolises the many benefits that the European Union brings to all its citizens. However, even my inexpert reading of the Bill suggests that this will be an extremely difficult or impossible thing to obtain. As one expert said in his evidence to the House of Lords European Union Select Committee:

“European governments did not adopt mechanisms to allow their citizens to access healthcare elsewhere for reasons of altruism. The welfare of a drunken participant in a stag party in Prague or Krakow never entered their thinking. Instead, their goal was to support one of the European Union’s four fundamental freedoms, the freedom of movement of people. Quite simply, a single European labour market would be impossible if those moving for employment, either permanently, or … on a daily basis, could not be assured that they would be looked after if they became ill”.


The same applies to those who live in Europe. This flies in the face of this Bill and the Government’s stated intentions, and it leads me to my last point—honesty.

When will the Government be honest with the people of the UK about what they will lose post Brexit in their access to healthcare if they travel and work in Europe, and indeed in many other matters revealed today in the leaked impact report? Almost every sector of the British economy included in the analysis would be negatively impacted in all the scenarios, with chemicals, clothing, manufacturing, food and drink, cars and retail the hardest hit. Just when will the Government come clean about how this will affect people and their families?