Brexit: Insulin Supplies

Debate between Lord Lamont of Lerwick and Baroness Manzoor

Thursday 24th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor]

—to enable these vital products to continue to move freely into the UK. Medicines and medical products will be prioritised to ensure they can use alternative routes; the Government have agreed this. In respect of capacity, we will have a number of warehouse facilities where we can keep refrigerated and other medicines to be used as and when necessary. On top of that—this is important—a serious shortage protocol was agreed on 18 January. It was laid before Parliament via the Human Medicines (Amendment) Regulations. This statutory instrument ensures that, if there is a serious shortage, we will enable pharmacists to look at other ways of dealing with this issue.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, first, is it not the case that the main manufacturer of insulin, to which the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, referred—the Danish company Novo Nordisk—has four months’ supply in this country already? Secondly, is it not the case under the WTO pharmaceutical tariffs elimination agreement, which applies to everybody, that there are no tariffs on medicines? This applies to 10,000 different products and covers 90% of the world’s trade in pharmaceuticals. Given what was announced today by the head of Calais port in this morning’s newspapers about extra flows and flow being maintained as normal in Calais, is it not ridiculous to think that we are going to obstruct things that we need or that the Europeans are going to obstruct things that they want to sell to us?

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, I could not have put it better myself. I entirely agree.