£2.3bn ‘cost shock’ for NHS in no-deal Brexit

Analysis by the Nuffield Trust has found that a no-deal Brexit would deliver a ‘cost shock’ to the NHS, likely to be in the region of £2.3 billion in extra annual costs by the end of 2019-20.

Owing to a sharp rise in red tape and trade barriers should Britain fail to secure an agreement with other European member states, the analysis claims that the cost would ultimately use all the money available to improve services for patients in the next two years.

Mark Dayan, a policy analyst who led the research, said that the £2.3 billion figure, roughly the equivalent to the annual budget of about six NHS trusts, means that ’the days of indefinite austerity for the health service would be back’.

Having already determined that only £500 million of the additional money announced in October’s Budget would be available next year for any improvements, the Nuffield Trust says that extra costs on this predicted scale would ‘eat up all the funding available to improve patient care next year and the year after’.

Part of the costs would be the result of the price the NHS paid for medicines rising, the costs of other supplies and services that the NHS buys in, non-tariff barriers, medical devices imported from the EU, as well as gaps in staffing if EU migration dried up.