Health secretary Wes Streeting yesterday (April 8) warned that the UK’s already disrupted medicine supply may be affected if US pharmaceutical tariffs start “kicking in”.
“Until this trade war erupted, we’d already had issues with medicines production and supply internationally,” he said speaking on Sky news breakfast.
“As ever in terms of medicines, there’s a number of factors at play,” he added.
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“There have been challenges in terms of manufacturing, challenges in terms of distribution, and if we start to see tariffs kicking in that’s another layer of challenge,” he said
“Whether it’s medicines, whether it’s parts for manufacturing, whether it’s the ability of businesses in this country to turn a profit, this is an extremely turbulent situation,” he added.
“Dispensing” action
Streeting told Sky that the government is watching “this situation extremely closely” and working “on a daily basis to make sure that we have the medicines supply this country needs”.
“Where we do see disruption to supply, we also take steps at the dispensing end,” he said.
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This shows “the flexibility needed to make sure that people can access the prescriptions they need,” he added.
The Department of Health and Social Care today (April 9) told C+D that the “steps” referred to by Streeting are those involved with serious shortage protocols (SSPs).
Tariff chaos
The comments come after days of confusion over whether pharmaceuticals will be subject to the global import tariffs last week (April 2) announced by US president Donald Trump.
Initially, the White House had said that pharmaceuticals would “not be subject to the reciprocal tariff”.
But during an Air Force One flight last Thursday (April 3), Trump told journalists that the US would impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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“The pharma is going to start coming in, I think, at a level that we haven’t really seen before,” he said.
“We are looking at pharma right now – pharmaceuticals, it’s a separate category – we’ll be announcing that sometime in the near future. It’s under review right now,” the newspaper reported.
The move would infringe the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement, which normally excludes medication from tariffs.
Medicine supply latest
Last month, the Nuffield Trust revealed that the “elevated and troubling level” of medicine shortages in the UK can be blamed on Brexit.
“There [has been] little sign of a stable recovery” in the UK since Brexit, the Think Tank added.
It comes after the pharmacy all party parliamentary group (APPG) launched a “vital” inquiry into the impact of medicines shortages in England in December.
Read more: ‘New normal’ of medicine shortages a ‘significant burden on pharmacists’
At the time, the group asked for evidence from “all those impacted by medicines shortages” – including pharmacists and pharmacy teams, GPs and prescribers, patient groups, professional organisations and medicines manufacturers and distributors.
Meanwhile in February, a group of 45 cross-party MPs signed a letter to health secretary Wes Streeting calling for “an urgent review into ongoing medication shortages”, saying that if action is not taken, the crisis will “worsen”.
