Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Wollaston]

That is, indeed, a question that I have been addressing. What will happen to expats in Europe? What we absolutely must focus on, however, is what will happen 135 days from now if we do not have a deal and people are left high and dry. It is a very worrying situation.

The issue of the workforce does not just affect nursing staff. We should bear in mind that 5% of members of the regulated nursing profession, 16% of dentists, 5% of allied health professionals and 9% of doctors are EEA nationals. We cannot afford to lose any more of that workforce, or to demoralise them further. I think it shames us all that the Health and Social Care Committee heard from nursing staff from across the European Union some of whom were in tears when reporting that they no longer felt welcome here. That is a terrible Brexit penalty, and no one voted for it when they went to the polls.

This does not just affect the workforce either. The Brexit penalty applies to the entire supply chain of medicines and medical devices, from research and development to clinical trials, to the safety testing of batches of medicines, and right through to the pharmacy shelf and the hospital. There are many unanswered questions about the issue of stockpiling, and about contingency plans for products that may require refrigeration, or products with very short shelf lives that cannot be stockpiled. There may also be brand-switching issues: for people who suffer from conditions such as epilepsy, switching brands is not easy.

I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will bring my remarks to a close shortly. [Interruption.] I understand that you were merely coughing, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will continue.

Refrigerated warehousing and special air freight do not come cheap. The companies whom we met, represented by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, made it clear that they were already having to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on contingency planning. The Government have said that they intend to reimburse companies, but the smaller companies need to know how quickly they will be reimbursed, because they may have cash-flow issues. They need to know the details of how the scheme will work, but they simply do not have the information that would enable them to make plans for the future. I hope that the Minister will be very mindful of that.

As I said earlier, the simple truth is that the many versions of Brexit have very different implications for the NHS, for social care, for public health and for research. Once this deal is published, we will have an opportunity to set out what this means, but, most important, to set all the risks and benefits of the deal that is on offer for the NHS and social care. The Minister will be aware of the important principle of informed consent in healthcare. No one would dream of going into an operating theatre and having an operation without someone telling them what is involved and setting out the risks and benefits so that they could weigh them up for themselves. That is called informed consent, and without informed consent, there is no valid consent.

Let me say to the Minister that we are all being wheeled into the operating theatre for major constitutional, economic and social surgery without informed consent, and let me ask him please to consider how things will be 136 days from now, after we crash out with no deal and when the serious consequences of that start to unfold and unravel and hit real people’s lives. What will he be saying to his constituents and the House if we have proceeded without informed consent?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred Division. In respect of the question relating to electricity and gas, the Ayes were 285 and the Noes were 223, so the Question was agreed to.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]