ABHI Brexit Update: Two New Acronyms...
It was never likely that I was going to be able to give you much of a download on goings-on at Chequers before close of play today anyway, but the meeting has been designed to be leak-free. Perhaps befitting of the recent behaviour of some of our elected representatives, all mobile devices are being confiscated at the door, put in a box and placed on top of the toy cupboard. It has also been suggested that they are being replaced by cards for a local minicab company, should some attendees have no use of a ministerial car by the time they are all finished.
Perhaps I will pen a special edition early next week reporting on the Cabinet reshuffle or the runners and riders in the Conservative Party leadership election...Although I have a sense we will again be underwhelmed.
The PM will produce one of her showdown-avoiding compromises, which makes both sides feel like they have won ground, and I will be reporting the content of the Brexit White Paper this time next week (expect it on Thursday).
Plenty of other stuff happened that is relevant and I have two new acronyms for you to practice over the weekend.
Simon Stevens’s appearance on the Andrew Marr show last Sunday had a lot of you asking me questions about NHS preparedness for Brexit and our role in that. Stevens indicated that the NHS was gearing up for a no deal scenario with regard to its supplies. I have said here before that it is impossible to make a case that government officials have not listened to or do not understand our issues.
They have and they do.
A recent meeting with a Cabinet Office Minister also confirmed that they have a good appreciation of the detail. A key recommendation from our Brexit work from the outset has been to exempt goods used in the delivery of healthcare from any new border, customs or VAT arrangements. This has been picked up by our friends in the Brexit Health Alliance (BHA), and, you will recall, that I spoke on the very subject at their event during the recent NHS Confederation conference. BHA again discussed the issue at last week’s quarterly summit, and you will see more from them on this in the coming weeks.
Brexit preparedness is also appearing on the agendas of NHS Boards, and we talk regularly to NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care about emerging concerns.
Contingencies the NHS has in the event of no deal, or one that may introduce delays at borders for medical supplies, are the same as yours and they are limited. You can either increase stock levels and risk spending money unnecessarily, or you can trust in a deal and risk running out. The former approach also assumes that any additional costs can be absorbed, and that the stock is actually available.
We continue to point out that, should the UK’s status as a Tier 1 market be jeopardised because of the uncertainty, threats to the continuity of supply will be exacerbated.
Back to those acronyms. Let’s start with “WAIB” — the Withdrawal and Implementation Bill. I have told you about the Withdrawal Bill that puts existing EU law onto the UK statute book, and we need the WAIB to incorporate any withdrawal arrangements agreed with Brussels.
The other one is "FCA". Tony Blair had one, now it's Theresa's turn to have a ”third-way”. The “facilitated customs arrangement,” is the PM’s solution to the impasse we have reached. Details are a bit sketchy, but the idea is that technology will be able to identify the ultimate destination of goods entering the UK, appropriate duties and tariffs collected and distributed accordingly.
This would allow us to negotiate trade deals independently with other third countries, as well as acting as an agent for the EU. The PM has called it the best of both worlds, but personally I am struggling to see how well an amalgam of two ideas that have already been rejected by the EU will actually go down.
It’s fair to say that has had a mixed reception amongst Cabinet ministers. One is reported as telling a friend that they have come up with a pronunciation of FCA. I cannot possibly repeat it here, but it is Anglo Saxon and you can go forth in to the weekend to work it out for yourselves.
