ZCZC
BFF-15
BRITAIN-EU-BREXIT-HEALTH
Brexit to cause ‘significant’ harm to Britain’s health service
PARIS, Feb 26, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Brexit will inflict “significant harm” on Britain’s
National Health Service, experts warned on Tuesday, with a no-deal departure from the
EU likely to provoke acute shortages of staff and medicines.
With little over a month remaining until Britain is due to leave the European Union,
there are fears that crashing out of the bloc without an agreement could drastically
affect the nation’s health.
Prime Minister Theresa May is struggling to gain domestic backing for her Brexit
deal, which would be a less drastic rupture.
Writing in the medical journal The Lancet, a team of medical and legal experts said
that “all forms of Brexit are bad for health.”
“However, by far the worst option would be a no-deal Brexit.”
They highlighted a recently published 10-year plan for the NHS that mentions Brexit
only twice, and cautioned that an end to free movement could exacerbate the current
staffing crisis.
Under a no-deal scenario, the government plans a minimum salary threshold of o30,000
($39,000, 34,500 euros) per year for non-residents, and has not announced any
exception for the European health workers the NHS is so heavily reliant upon.
“That would exclude many health workers,” said Martin McKee, co-author of the study
and a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
“First of all, that immediately sends out a signal that you’re not particularly
welcome,” he told AFP.
McKee said EU health workers would be far less likely to choose to work for the NHS
even if they met that earning threshold, as their salaries would be worth less with a
weaker pound, and their pensions not guaranteed.
– ‘Perfect storm’ –
The study examined the impact on the health service posed by four possible
scenarios: no-deal, May’s withdrawal agreement, the so-called Irish “backstop” to
avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, and the political declaration on a
future EU-UK relationship.
It found that while all four scenarios would be less beneficial to the NHS than
remaining in the EU, no-deal posed by far the largest threat.
The NHS was used by pro-Brexit campaigners in the run-up to the 2016 referendum,
most infamously in the subsequently debunked promise that Britain would spend the o350
million it sends each week to Brussels on improving the health service.
McKee accused politicians of failing to grasp the health implications of leaving the
EU.
“Despite the fact that ‘NHS’ was stuck all over the side of the bus, there was a
general sense that healthcare wouldn’t be affected because health is a matter for
member states rather than the EU,” he said.
“But of course everything you need, the building blocks for health systems, are in
some way subject to rules on free movement of goods and people and services.
“So there are bound to be consequences but I’m not sure that the government fully
understood that,” he added.
Although the government has announced plans to stockpile medicines in order to avoid
shortages in the event of a no-deal Brexit, McKee and his colleagues said scarcity of
some drugs was inevitable.
“The pharmaceutical supply system is extremely vulnerable, simply because it is so
complex,” he said.
“There’s a whole lot of things which are precarious to begin with and then Brexit is
making all of them worse,” he added.
“It really risks the creation of a perfect storm.”
BSS/AFP/AU/08:55 hrs