Brexit Negotiations and No Deal Contingency Planning

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

We published a technical notice on medicines, and a letter was sent to some suppliers. It is right to say that they have been asked to provide an additional six weeks’ worth of medicines, but it is worth bearing in mind that the Government already partner with pharmaceutical suppliers to ensure that we have three months’ worth of buffer stock for over 200 medicines through the emergency medicine buffer stock scheme and that Public Health England already holds at least three months’ supply of vaccines for national immunisation programmes. Of course, this would be a different set of circumstances, but those are the kind of contingency plans that pharmaceutical companies are already used to making. If the hon. Lady had looked, she would have seen that the response of the industry association was to welcome the proposals in our technical notice.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

rose—

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Ah, two admirably courteous fellows. What a difficult choice. I call Mr Jeremy Lefroy.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I thank my right hon. Friend, his colleagues and their teams for the huge amount of work they have done over the past couple of months in making a great deal of progress, as was quite evident last week and, indeed, in the Exiting the European Union Committee’s meeting with Mr Barnier yesterday? However, while I understand that the idea of coming away from all this with no deal must be put out there, it cannot be contemplated with any degree of equanimity. It would be seen by the world as a failure on our part and that of the European Union. It is not acceptable.

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for paying tribute to the excellent work being done at DExEU by our team of civil servants and across Whitehall. A huge amount of work is going on. I agree with his basic point that no deal would represent the worst-case scenario and the worst outcome from the negotiations. The best-case scenario and the optimum solution that we are aiming for is a good deal. I also agree that the approach to the Brexit negotiations will be defining both for the UK and the EU.