8. Plaid Cymru Debate: Brexit and Future Trade

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:49 pm on 4 December 2019.

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Photo of Rhun ap Iorwerth Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru 5:49, 4 December 2019

Two things: those were organic agreements that were arrived at over time, rather than this desperate United Kingdom going begging to the United States for a deal, but also this is another generation, now. We're not quite the same generation, David, and that is a time that is before I was born. We need to look to the time when my children and grandchildren will be living, because those are the times that we need to protect now. 

I've referred to the patent-protected drugs; there are real fears on generic drugs, too. The way the system works in the United States, we've seen it through the story of Martin Shkreli—Trump supporter, now a convicted felon—in the way that he used generic drugs and pushed their prices up in the United States. When you have a generic drug, you would expect economic forces to come into force and to drive costs down. The way the United States works, it is the opposite. We are lobbying in the United States to make sure that—. It's a protracted process when a company wants to introduce a generic drug. That's the kind of process that they will want introduced here, too. There's an example with Cuprimine, which is a niche drug. It was approved in the United States in 1970, a generic drug currently priced at $31,000 for 120 capsules in the United States. The British equivalent generic drug costs $230 for 120 capsules. That is the kind of system, the regulatory framework, the context in which the pharmaceutical companies in the United States would want to operate and deal with the United Kingdom national health service.

I'll leave it there, but do not believe for a second when Trump and Boris Johnson, for electoral reasons in this general election, say that the NHS is somehow going to be left untouched; it is clearly not, and the US pharmaceutical industry will make sure that it's not.