The effect of Brexit: A banana republic?

Warning: Exceptionally, this post is not on so-called alternative medicine but on a different scam.

The current issue of the BMJ carries an editorial that is worth quoting on my blog, I think. I have never made a secret of the fact that I am against Brexit. In fact, I re-took German nationality because of it. Therefore, I am in agreement with Kamran Abbasi, the BMJ editor and author of the editorial. Here are what I consider the two most important paragraphs from his article:

… In the absence of public debate and meaningful data six years after the UK’s Brexit referendum, we asked Richard Vize to examine the effects of Brexit on health and care (doi:10.1136/bmj.o1870).20 The news isn’t all bad, although there isn’t much good. Brexit hasn’t brought about a cut in NHS funding but did fail to deliver the £350m weekly windfall that Boris Johnson and others promised. The European Working Time Directive remains in place, and the predicted “stampede” of European doctors leaving the NHS hasn’t happened. But the impacts on social care and lower paid staff are harming delivery of care in an increasingly multidisciplinary service.

Health technology, life science industries, and research, where integration with Europe was greatest and benefits most obvious, are being damaged. Promises to cut red tape have created new complexities and been tarnished by suspect procurement practices at the height of the pandemic (doi:10.1136/bmj.o1893).21 Perhaps the most damning legacy of Brexit, however, is the state of unreadiness it created for a pandemic that required utmost readiness. Whether or not you agree Brexit was the right decision, you should at least agree that it is a decision worthy of question, analysis, and redoubled effort if the signs are good and possibly even reversal if the damage is too great.

This quote probably makes more sense if one also reads the paper referenced in its 2nd link. So, please allow me to quote from this article as well:

… In a highly critical report, the Commons Public Account Committee accuses the Department of Health and Social Care of “woefully inadequate record keeping” and failing to meet basic requirements to publicly report ministers’ external meetings or deal with potential conflicts of interest when awarding testing contracts to the company.

The committee said that large gaps in the document trail meant it was impossible to say the contracts were awarded properly in the way that would be expected, even allowing for the exceptional circumstances and accelerated processes in place at the time. The first contract, for £132m, was awarded at the height of the covid pandemic in March 2020, when the department had suspended the normal requirements for competition between suppliers in the award of government contracts.

The report noted that officials were aware of contacts between Matt Hancock, the then health and social care secretary, and Owen Paterson, a Conservative MP and paid consultant for Randox, and of hospitality that Hancock received from Randox’s founder Peter Fitzgerald in 2019, but failed to identify any conflicts of interest before awarding the first contract.

The department set up a “VIP lane,” through which suppliers put forward by officials, MPs, ministers, or Number 10 would be given priority. Suppliers coming through priority routes were awarded £6bn out of the total £7.9bn of testing contracts awarded between May 2020 and March 2021, the committee noted…

This is by no means all, and I do encourage you to read these articles in full. Once you have, you might ask yourself as I do:

Has Britain become a banana republic?