SWB Brexit Bulletin – 23 August 2019
August 23, 2019
With the change in government leadership and the 31 October on the horizon we are restarting our Brexit bulletin to bring you up to speed on the latest guidance in relation to Brexit and its impact on healthcare and the NHS. Our Trust will continue to ensure we have robust arrangements in place so that we are best prepared for the UK’s departure from the European Union.
Additional help for UK innovation and research post-Brexit
The Government has pledged further support for UK researchers and businesses post-Brexit, including providing additional funding to support Horizon 2020 projects beyond 2020 and a change to immigration rules to continue to attract international science and research talent after the UK leaves the EU. Further information is available from UK Research and Innovation
Continuity of medicines’ supply
The Government has announced on 26th June that it will be continuing with its approach to continuity of medicines’ supply, involving a range of activities including warehousing, buffer stocks and procurement for extra ferry capacity, including an express freight service for medicines and medical products. It has also written to the medicines and medical devices industries providing further information on its plans to minimise medicines’ disruption.
NHS organisations have been written to by the national team to ask us to ensure we have a key team in place to oversee EU Exit preparations. We expect that the national team will check on our readiness at the end of August. If you have questions or concerns please contact Chief Executive, Toby Lewis, who is our Senior Responsible Officer for Brexit on tobylewis@nhs.net
Overseas visitors
Both sides in the Brexit negotiations have agreed in principle to preserve reciprocal health care rights until the end of a transition period (awaiting confirmation of this time limit), at least for those citizens already residing in another EU country. However, until the final outcome of the talks is known, uncertainty remains about the future. Estimates of the number of people this involves differ among the available sources. However, it has been suggested that there are around 1 million British migrants living in other EU countries, compared with around 3 million EU migrants living in the UK.UK citizens living abroad tend to be older, and therefore more likely to use health and care services, than EU citizens living in the UK. Where significant numbers of UK citizens to return to the UK this would have implications for health and care services. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/healthcare-for-eu-and-efta-citizens-visiting-the-uk
In a no-deal scenario, the government will seek to protect current reciprocal healthcare rights through transitional bilateral agreements with other member states, which would include whether or how residents who are citizens of other states would be charged for services. However, there is no certainty on this so the current position is that the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) will no longer be valid so British citizens travelling to the EU would need to take out private travel insurance. In the same way EU citizens travelling to the UK will become chargeable after 31 October (Brexit day) and would need to take out private travel insurance.
Without an arrangement similar to the EHIC, costs will transfer to the individual – people travelling abroad in the EU would need to take out private travel insurance in the same way as they would when travelling outside the EU. The extent of the impact on the health and care system of UK citizens living abroad returning to the UK in the event of no deal is uncertain and requires further modelling. The advice from the Department of Health and Social Care is that we continue with the current process and any changes will be notified to all trusts.