Brexit Readiness: Operation Yellowhammer

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The availability of HRT medicine has made a dramatic and beneficial difference to the lives of women in this country. It has been a medical breakthrough over the past few decades, which has to be celebrated. It has been the case, even before we have left the EU, that there have been particular problems with HRT supply in certain areas, and that underlines the fact that, occasionally, there can be interruptions in supply of particular medicines, which are completely unrelated to Brexit or other challenges. We are doing everything that we can to ensure that we have a free flow of medical products through the short straits and also additional capacity to ensure that medical products, including HRT treatments, are available as before after we leave.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (IGC)]

As the Minister has dodged the specific questions from the right hon. and learned Members for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), he is giving the House the impression that those Yellowhammer document versions were improperly manipulated by the Government from the ones that were leaked to the ones that were eventually published. May I now ask him very specifically for the fourth occasion: when was the title changed from base case to worst case?

[Michael Gove]

As I have said on more than four occasions, it is the case that the base scenario relates to the unalterable facts; a reasonable worst-case scenario relates to the Yellowhammer assumptions.