Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with the Home Secretary on the effect of the proposed customs checks for medicines entering from the EU after the UK has left the EU.

My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State has regular meetings with the Home Secretary on a range of topics.

The United Kingdom’s priority is to negotiate a future customs arrangement that ensures cross-border trade is as frictionless as possible and which, crucially, avoids a hard border – limiting the potential for delays at relevant entry points such as the Channel Tunnel and Dover. Following detailed and extensive work on all the options, the Government has set out the two approaches that most closely meet our objective to protect patients: one is a highly streamlined customs arrangement; the other is a new customs partnership with the European Union.

The Government has also started working on our domestic preparations. The Government is on course to having a functioning customs service on ‘Day One’ after our withdrawal from the EU, with suitable plans in place to ensure that supplies of priority goods are maintained.