In a week when it emerged that some foreign diplomats had been asked to determine just how likely they think it is that the UK will actually leave the EU, two British ministers are now urging the government to ensure that the UK remains a part of the EU drugs regulation apparatus. Like all things EU, in the event that a dispute should arise related to medicines licenced in the EU between the UK and an EU member state, the ultimate court of arbitration will be the ECJ. As Mrs May’s (personal?) red line insists that the UK will no longer be under ECJ jurisdiction when it leaves the EU, this would seem impossible.
Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt (ministers for business and health, respectively) suggested in a Financial Times article that: "The UK would like to find a way to continue to collaborate with the EU." Currently, the European Medicines Agency overseas pan-European drug use; ironically, it is based in London but would relocate to the EU post Brexit. The two argue that such a relationship would be “in the interest of public health and safety”.
The failure to achieve this would require that a UK based regulatory agency be set up to licence new compounds produced in the UK (these would also need to gain separate EU licences) or drugs developed outside the UK. Some suggest that this would delay the provision of new drugs to UK patients and that foreign companies would concentrate their efforts on the larger EU market.
This would seem to be the latest example of unforeseen circumstances of the referendum decision. In a survey in the Guardian at the weekend, 60% of respondents said that they wished to continue to be considered as EU citizens after Brexit, granting them freedom of movement and unrestricted tourism travel within the bloc.