Draft Blood Safety and Quality (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 General Committees

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I have a couple of brief questions of the Minister.

First and foremost, the point that has to be made about this scenario is that there is no majority in the House of Commons for us to leave with no deal. That needs to be underlined. If we do leave without a deal, it will be entirely the fault of the Prime Minister.

That aside, what implications does this treatment of the UK as a third country by the European Union have down the road? Has the Minister considered that? What about continued supply? Are we in competition with other European countries? Is supply likely to be interfered with? Will priority be given to EU countries over us for that supply? I might be worrying unnecessarily, but I would like to know whether the Minister has given that any consideration, or whether it is in fact the case.

Similarly, on future improvements in standards, technology and knowledge, will we keep up under article 29 with technical improvements in the field? Will we mirror that in this country? How will we keep ourselves at the forefront of medicine in this area to ensure that we do not fall behind our European neighbours as a consequence of not being part of the collective that deals with such issues under article 29 of the European treaty?