The Jean Monnet Chair in EU Law in the City Law School requested as part of a group of five experts to submit evidence to the House of Lords’ (Select) European Union Committee.
By Mr John Stevenson(Senior Communications Officer), Published
Jean Monnet Chair in EU Law in the City Law School, Professor Tamara Hervey, has recently given evidence to the House of Lords’ (Select) European Union Committee’s inquiry on food, environment, energy and health.
Professor Hervey, who recently joined City, provided evidence to the Committee in her previous role as a Professor of Law at the University of Sheffield, and as part of a group which included Mark Dayan, Head of Public Affairs and Policy Analyst at the Nuffield Trust; Dr Nicholas Fahy, Research Fellow at University of Oxford; Martha McCarey, Researcher, Nuffield Trust; and Dr Matthew Wood, Senior Lecturer, University of Sheffield.
The group’s written evidence on the topic of health covers nine areas excluding public health: European Health Insurance Card/UK Global Health Insurance Card (EHIC/GHIC) and health provision for residents including pensioners; Mutual recognition of regulations and tests; Patent protection and supplementary protection certificates for medicinal products; Mutual recognition of professional qualifications; Health and social care workforce labour standards/terms and conditions; Cross-border health services; Medical research; Health security; and Medical Radioisotopes.
Their response to the Inquiry, cited in the Committee’s report, draws on work from two overlapping and related projects: Health Governance after Brexit, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (University of Sheffield and Queen’s University Belfast); and
The ‘Brexit Health Tracker’ pilot, funded by the Health Foundation (Nuffield Trust, University of Oxford, University of Sheffield, University of Michigan).
Each section covers their assessment of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement’s (TCA) impact, including what those provisions achieve, challenges arising and how they might be resolved, and their recommendations for what the UK and the EU should seek to accomplish going forward.
The group argues that the TCA retains previous arrangements for health and healthcare governance though there is a much sharper rupture for the regulation of medicines and medical devices than for cross-border healthcare.
However, they argue that the legal basis for those arrangements has changed - TCA has the character of international law and is fundamentally different from what came before. Many provisions are significantly dependent upon voluntary implementation and enforcement. Parts of the TCA are worded ambiguously. Collaborative forms of governance including regulators, businesses, employers, professional and patient organisations, non-governmental organisations, universities, and other stakeholders will be required to provide oversight of the TCA, including its ongoing implementation and enforcement.
To read the group’s submission in its entirety, please visit this weblink.
To read the House of Lords’ report in its entirety, please visit this weblink.