Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking with Ministers in each of the devolved administrations to ensure the adequacy of supply of medicines throughout the UK after the UK has left the EU.

The Government’s no-deal European Union exit contingency planning covers the entire United Kingdom and has been developed in partnership with the devolved administrations and local National Health Service colleagues. The Department will continue to work closely with colleagues in the devolved administrations towards achieving our objective of ensuring a seamless supply to patients throughout the UK should we leave the EU without a deal next March, to ensure a UK-wide, cross-Government approach to our planning.

Earlier this year, the Department undertook an analysis using Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and European Medicines Agency data on the supply chain for all medicines. This identified those products coming to the UK from or via the EU or wider EEA countries. We wrote to pharmaceutical companies on 23 August setting out our contingency planning and our aim of ensuring continuity of medicines supple for patients across the UK. We have received very good engagement from the industry in response to our letters. The Department continues to work closely with these companies to ensure that their UK stockpiles of medicines are sufficient to cope with any potential delays at the border that may arise in event of a no-deal EU exit.