To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the robustness of supply chain networks for EU supplied (a) medicines, and (b) medical equipment in (i) England, (ii) Wales, (iii) Scotland and (iv) Northern Ireland over the next two years.

The Government has now agreed the Withdrawal Agreement with the European Commission. As a consequence, the Department does not expect market access to medicines and medical products for the United Kingdom to change under the terms of that agreement during the implementation period, which will run from March 2019 until December 2020. The supply of medicines and medical products would remain unchanged during the implementation period.

The Department does not expect to see significant changes to existing medicine and medical product supply chains or capacity in the intervening period. However, we will be monitoring this closely.

As a responsible Government, we continue to prepare proportionately for all scenarios, including the unlikely outcome that we leave the European Union without a deal in March 2019.

Our contingency planning covers the entire UK and has been developed in partnership with the devolved administrations. The public can be confident that the UK Government and the devolved administrations are working to ensure an aligned approach to achieving our objective of ensuring a seamless supply to patients throughout the UK should we leave the EU without a deal in March 2019.

There are already teams within the Department that deal with medical supplies shortages arising both in the community and in hospitals. We have well-established operational levers and channels we use between ourselves, the Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency and the National Health Service to mitigate supply issues.