Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Operation Yellowhammer HMG Reasonable Worst Case Planning Assumptions paragraph 11iii, what additional funding his Department has allocated to help (a) pensioners, (b) students, (c) workers and (d) travellers in EU countries access healthcare in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal.

The Government issued a press release on 23 September 2019, setting out the transitional healthcare arrangements that the Department has put in place to protect access to healthcare for UK-insured individuals if the United Kingdom leaves the European Union without a deal. These arrangements will come into operation in a ‘no deal’ scenario, in the absence of an EU-wide solution or bilateral reciprocal healthcare arrangements with individual Member States.

The ultimate cost of these arrangements will depend on which Member States accept the Government’s offer to continue the current reciprocal healthcare arrangements for a transitional period until 31 December 2020. Based on detailed analysis undertaken by the Department, the estimated maximum expenditure that the Government expects to make for these arrangements is £50 million in 2019/20 and £100 million in 2020/21.

I laid a Written Ministerial Statement HCWS1832 on 26 September 2019, which sets out the details of these transitional arrangements.