Catherine West MP raises the issue in Parliament

We have reported several times on the damage caused by the loss of the European Medicines Agency to Amsterdam, the benefits that the wide range of EU agencies provide to the UK, and the Prime Minister's belated recognition that some EU agencies were valuable. Now L4E President Catherine West MP writes about how she raised these issues in Parliament in the first week of September 2018.

Earlier this year, the Prime Minister dismissed my concerns about British science and research post Brexit, when I challenged her directly. 

Yet this week we learnt that Britain’s leading role evaluating medicines is collapsing and I’ve heard first-hand from Hornsey & Wood Green constituents about the impact. We are losing exceptionally talented people who are moving overseas as their jobs disappear and the well-respected Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) are losing contracts and failing to win new ones because there’s such uncertainty over what will happen from March next year. That’s devastating for jobs, our economy, and our position as a global leader in science. 

On Tuesday, I asked the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union Dominic Raab what actions the Government is taking to mitigate the effects on British science of the disastrous move offshore of the European Medicines Agency. In the event of no deal, how many research jobs do the Government estimate will be lost during the scramble to set up a new statutory authorising body? Again, his answer provided little reassurance.

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