Brexit is bad for your health, especially if you have cancer. That’s the conclusion from a report titled “Nothing Should Stand In The Way”.
The paper, from Cancer Research UK (CRUK), details how the manner in which Britain left the European Union has done just that – stood in the way of the best possible cancer research and care for UK patients. Importing new cancer drugs now costs almost four times as much. For some trials, shipping costs have increased tenfold. Meanwhile, access to European funds and talent has dried up for UK-based cancer research labs.
It is a sad tale, as CRUK’s Laura Williams says, of “clinical trials delayed; drugs stuck in transit; samples destroyed; difficulties recruiting to permanent posts; waits for innovative bits of kit; uncertainty about project funding; the enforced use of expensive couriers; concerns about data-sharing; and frustration at fewer chances to offer shorter-term opportunities to EU-based scientists that push the barriers of research.”
This is a tragedy, and one that could have been prevented, twice. Experts (but who needs those, Lord Gove?) warned that leaving the EU would badly damage a UK medical research sector that was closely intertwined with its European peers and benefited from billions of pounds through pan-European schemes such as Horizon. As Alexander Wright, head of global policy and programmes at Cancer Research UK told me: “Over 40% of our research involves working with countries inside the EU”.
Even after the referendum, the situation might have been saved. Professor Tamara Hervey, an expert on European health law from the City Law School explains: “The best Brexit for health would have meant staying in the European economic area, the EEA”. With single market access, free movement for researchers and ongoing regulatory alignment there would have been far less trade friction and far less expense.
Instead, Boris Johnson, desperate and incompetent, threw the baby out with the bathwater. The result is that as this report says, “Everything’s harder”. Or to be more precise, as Alexander Wright says, “Our evidence shows the challenges involved with Brexit have had a negative effect on people affected by cancer.”
Remember this when Brexiteers pump out the lie that Brexit enabled the UK to get a head start in the race to develop a Covid vaccine and has freed our researchers from Brussels bureaucracy.
Cancer Research UK has found three core areas of medical research that have been affected by the UK’s exit from the EU. The UK’s access to research funding and collaboration, the environment for clinical trials and medicines, including regulation and standards, and the lack of mobility of the research workforce.
Added tests and rules have meant, in just one case, wasting £22,000 on “certifying” aspirin, one of the world’s oldest, commonest, simplest and most widely used drugs. Shipping costs have increased and a more restrictive immigration system has discouraged top researchers from coming to the UK.
Cancer Research UK calculates that added visa charges alone are costing it £700,000 a year – for that you could train 17 new PhDs every year. The world-renowned Francis Crick Institute is spending another £500,000.
The total across all of the UK’s universities and medical research bodies is impossible to measure, but the damage must be immense and not just because of the cost; attracting the brightest and the best foreign researchers when you advertise to the world that they are not welcome is increasingly difficult.
The solutions to this disgusting act of self-harm are within our grasp. Cancer Research UK’s report calls for four steps, which should be part of the government’s Brexit reset:
1) Avoiding duplication to expedite clinical trials with a UK-EU mutual recognition agreement that includes the inspection of medicines manufacturing sites, batch release and testing. (It is insane that this was not part of the original Trade and Co-operation Agreement).
2) Supporting research programmes, with the UK guaranteeing to stay in the Horizon+ research fund as well as joining health-related EU-funded programmes. (Another no-brainer).
3) Reducing trade friction to support the logistics industry and to meet cross-border regulatory requirements more effectively. (This would ensure scientists can access items needed for research in a “timely manner”, something they cannot do at the moment).
4) Ensuring data flows freely, with alignment on data protection. (If we lose the ability to share data with the EU, all bets are off).
On top of that, the UK needs to get real about immigration. It is idiotic that a Reform-driven attempt to bring down overall immigration numbers at all costs means we are sending top scientists and researchers elsewhere.
Labour now has a chance to undo some of the damage that Brexit has done to the health of the nation and its fight against cancer. No doubt Nigel Farage and his ilk will bleat about Brexit betrayal and “re-entering the EU by the back door”. But why not ask cancer patients what they think?
Many were surveyed for this report and one says, quite clearly: “I don’t care about geographical boundaries in Europe… I just care about scientists being able to work together.”
Successive governments have been run by cowards, hypocrites, liars and uncaring populists. As a result, cancer patients have died unnecessarily.
This government needs to be different and now it has a chance. It needs to be able to boast that it let nothing, and no one stand in its way of improving the health of the people – not even Brexit.
