Corbyn: Trade deal with US could cost NHS £500m a week

Jeremy Corbyn was accused of peddling ‘ridiculous nonsense’ yesterday after he claimed that a post-Brexit Boris Johnson trade deal with the US could cost the NHS £500million a week.

The Labour leader said a ‘ sell- out trade deal with Donald Trump’ could drive up the cost of medicines – because the US spends much more per head on drugs than the UK.

He claimed this would mean the health service having to spend another half a million pounds a week on drugs, saying the money ‘could be taken out of the NHS and handed to big drugs companies’.

US trade negotiators are said to want ‘full market access’ to the NHS for US pharmaceuticals giants.

However, Cabinet minister michael Gove dismissed the claim as a ‘fantasy’ because the NHS will not be on the table during any trade negotiations with the US.

And the academic behind the £500million figure said the estimate was only a ‘worst- case scenario’ because there is ‘no way to predict’ how much a trade deal would actually push up the price of drugs by.

But, confronted by the criticism of his claims last night, mr Corbyn refused to back down – suggesting the true figure may be even higher. The row comes days after hospital bosses pleaded with political parties not to ‘weaponise’ the NHS.

At an election rally in Harlow, essex, yesterday, mr Corbyn said: ‘Johnson stood in front of a bus and promised £350million a week for the NHS.

‘Now we find out that £500million a week could be taken out of the NHS and handed to big drugs companies under his plans for a sell- out trade deal with Donald Trump.

‘We now know that US and UK officials have been discussing drug pricing in secret and the US government is demanding full market access for US products. Senior NHS managers have said that would mean higher prices for medicines which will pass on costs to both patients and the NHS.’

In response, mr Gove told the BBC: ‘It is the most ridiculous nonsense I have ever heard in my 52 years on this earth.

‘It is a fantasy. It is a figure plucked from thin air in order to try to distract attention from the weakness of Jeremy Corbyn’s position on Brexit.

‘We have made it perfectly clear drug prices won’t be going up. Jeremy Corbyn is attempting to perpetuate Halloween into November by telling ghost stories that frankly no one believes.’

Labour’s £500million a week figure is based on comments made by Dr Andrew Hill from Liverpool University, who advises the World Health Organisation.

Last week he told Channel 4 Dispatches: ‘Our annual drugs bill for the NHS is £18billion. If we had to have American drug prices we are talking about £18billion a year going up to £45billion, so that’s an extra £27billion a year, or £500million a week extra for the NHS to pay.’

But the £500million figure was fact checked by the BBC yesterday – and was found to be ‘unlikely’. The figure came from a report written by Dr Hill and two academics from Harvard University, where it was described as a ‘crude’ estimate.

The authors said they were not attempting a precise estimate of the effect of any trade agreement on the price of drugs in the UK. Dr Hill told the mail: ‘The £500million per week estimate is a worst case scenario if we had to pay the same price for all drugs as the US.’

However, he did not criticise mr Corbyn for using the figure, saying he was ‘only presenting the worst case scenario’.

The rough estimate comes from the fact that figures show that the US spends 2.5 times as much on medicines as Britain.

So the report just multiplies the NHS drugs bill of £18billion a year by 2.5 to £45billion, to come up with the ‘£500million a week extra’ figure.

‘Ridiculous nonsense’