Health impact of Brexit
AS the clock ticks down to our departure from the EU, the uncertainty surrounding post-Brexit Britain poses an ever more serious risk to the health service, its patients and its workforce.
With a no-deal scenario looking more probable every day and the UK facing the real possibility of having to trade under WTO rules, there will likely be an appetite from the Government to secure new agreements that will go some way to minimise Brexit’s cost to the economy.
However, these new trade deals absolutely must not put money ahead of the nation’s health.
First and foremost, the NHS must be taken off the table entirely.
Our public health service cannot be dismantled and auctioned off to the highest bidder bit by bit to plug holes in the country’s finances caused by a poorly-judged political decision.
If healthcare provision is not excluded from future trade agreements, it would risk sections of the NHS being outsourced to private companies based abroad, further contributing to the worrying increase in ● publicly-funded care being delivered by the independent sector.
Market, rather than health-driven policies, contribute to fragmentation of services and create significant barriers to innovative and co-operative models of care that can have a real positive impact on the health of the country.
We must not allow any future deals to dictate Britain’s ability to improve the health and wellbeing of its citizens, but many agreements include clauses that could do just that.
Such clauses mean companies can sue governments for introducing policies or measures that seek to improve models of care and public health, but in doing so hit investors’ profits.
The current high health and safety standards of products allowed through our borders, including those for food items, are also under threat.
Furthermore, the Government risks undermining Britain’s role as a global leader on health if lower-income countries are no longer able to affordably access essential medicines because of strengthened intellectual property rights.
While the Government has attempted to make some assurances, in its own words ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’, and it is easy to see how promises made could soon be broken to push through lucrative trade agreements.
And worryingly, the Trade Bill, if left unamended, would allow such deals to be struck with little transparency and almost no parliamentary scrutiny.
The BMA has been clear on the major threat Brexit poses to the NHS and the nation’s health, and it is therefore vital the public is given a vote on any final deal with the EU.