European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

With an airport and the northern air traffic control in my constituency, naturally I support amendments 245 and 246, on staying in the single European sky agreement, which is the reform of airspace, and the European common aviation agreement, which is what allowed the budget airlines to literally take off and people to travel cheaply. However, the European Aviation Safety Agency is also important, and that is a body of the EU and EFTA. It is important to recognise that there are things we can be in, there are things we cannot be in, and we lose these because we seem to have negotiated with ourselves to move to a hard Brexit instead of a soft Brexit. People here are saying , “Oh yes, this was all aired in the debate.” I remember hearing leavers saying, “Of course we won’t leave the single market. Don’t be ridiculous.” Yet that is the plan and that is where we are heading at the moment.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

In relation to the points and the amendments from the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), does my hon. Friend agree that, without the transparency of knowing what we are progressing to, many of the items that she is talking about cannot be agreed in the House? We leave ourselves open to the accusation made by Kathy Sheridan in The Irish Times this morning that the Government are

“failing to establish in advance what questions should be asked. Of utterly disdaining an alternative, unifying vision while obsessing about trade, blue passports and colonial nostalgia.”—[Interruption.]

[Dr Whitford]

Okay, I am just going to move swiftly on. It was a speech, so my hon. Friend has had his chance to get that in.

There are multiple agencies that are important for the nations across the UK, but my particular interest is of course health. We know that the European Medicines Agency is moving to Amsterdam, but the much bigger issue is the UK coming out of the European Medicines Agency. This is a body that has massively reduced bureaucracy, streamlined the launch of new drugs and meant that the pharmaceutical industry has to go through only one registration process for 500 million people. That is why drugs are launched in Europe at much the same time as America and about a year before Canada and Australia. Given some of what is going on in NHS England—including the budget impact assessment, which can allow expensive drugs to be delayed for three years—what I am hearing from those in the pharmaceutical industry is that they see the UK as a hostile market and that they may not come six months later or a year later. It may take longer than that because they only see the point in paying the extra cost to register when they have a chance of their drug being used in the NHS.