Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:35 pm on 9 January 2019.
In the event of a 'no deal' Brexit, it will be virtually impossible to continue supply chains in exactly the same way as now. Much of this comes on road freight and the undeniable reality is that if there are problems in road freight that affect our ports, as you'll have seen from the exercise undertaken recently and reported in the Financial Times—hardly an organ of fearmongering or left-wing conspiracy theories—it demonstrates the significant and quite shocking impact of minor delays for all freight transport coming into the country. The alternative plan, which is not a secret, is about, if that were to be the case, whether medicines with very short half-lives before they're no longer useful—and I've regularly talked about nuclear medicine and radioisotopes in the past as well—for those to be flown, and that would undeniably provide an additional cost, and it may affect the supply. But the additional cost would then have to be borne by the taxpayer. So, there is, undeniably, a challenge, and I've also regularly talked about the challenge for insulin that is made for type 1 diabetics. We make nothing like enough insulin for type 1 diabetics to cover our own population. And, again, in a 'no deal' Brexit, that is one of the very real risks to directly affect people's health and well-being almost immediately.