Going it Alone: Health and Brexit in the UK

When the UK left the single market, it marked the end of the application of European law and institutions which underpinned many elements of health and health care in the UK. Regulations on medicines and devices, laws on the buying and selling of care, trade agreements, and rules on migration which had previously worked across most of a continent, were repatriated to the UK.

This report, an interim output from the Health and International Relations Monitor project funded by the Health Foundation, considers the impact of leaving the EU and changing international relations for health.

It considers changes in health across six key areas: medicines and devices, international trade agreements, devolution, procurement, workforce and Northern Ireland.

In the full report to be published in the Spring, we intend to examine two of the building blocks of health most affected by Brexit - workforce and living standards.