POLITICS INSIDE


David Tredinnick, MP for Boswick, Leicestershire, on Brexit’s impact on health


The state of the health industry


Anyone who has followed my Parliamentary career will know that my interest in health issues, in particular complementary health, has been the common thread throughout my time at Westminster. Recent events with the Brexit vote have shown how seemingly unrelated topics have


very real impacts on each other. For years there have been


concerns that EU legislation, such as the Food Supplements Directive and Herbal Medicinal Products Directive, have a negative impact on the UK health industry and on patients’ ability to access products. No amount of lobbying by the Government has managed to convince our EU partners


‘Our having the ability to determine our own regulations and trade deals does provide hope’


that the UK market is very different in its needs and outlook, and that homogenisation in the area is neither possible nor desirable. Therefore, would a post-Brexit UK suddenly rid us of these unwanted regulations and free


the shackles from the health food sector as some people who have contacted me hope? Seemingly not, at least not to begin with, with the Government intending to adopt all


EU laws and revise them as and when necessary in the future. In the longer term, though, our having the ability to determine our own regulations and


• Lowers the overall impact on business


• Abolishes annual uprating and the Treasury’s ability to predetermine revenue - bringing forward the switch in the uprating of the business rates multiplier from RPI to CPI as an interim measure


• Delivers a significantly lighter-touch and more frequent (annual) revaluation system


• Reduces the complexity of reliefs, granting them automatically where possible


• Permanently applies small business rate relief, or an equivalent threshold, below which no rates apply


• Is more responsive to both local economic conditions and the wider economic cycle


• Removes disincentives to invest by excluding plant and machinery from valuations.


The Chamber calculated that the cost to the Exchequer of implementing the wish list would be only £3.149bn a year. Chris said: “This is not a significant cost to the


Exchequer to ensure that small businesses are not punished by our broken business rates system and for ensuring that errors can be quickly and accurately corrected. We urge the Chancellor to act on these requests without delay as they are not just the wants of our members but of businesses across the country.”


trade deals does provide hope. Products which were previously available in the UK from countries like China are


currently banned under these directives, despite Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) being a booming and multi-billion pound industry in China. It is estimated that by 2025 the TCM market in China will be worth €96.2bn. However,


products which are produced to Good Manufacturing Practise standards in China, where they have many years expertise in doing so, are banned here because of these EU regulations. There is no incentive for these companies to change their manufacturing processes to


conform to EU regulations and access our smaller restrictive market. However, when the Government forges new trade deals outside the EU it must surely lend more opportunities for investment from China, and elsewhere, and open up these new markets. We live, work and exist in a global economy where free trade should be our goal, not


protectionism which ultimately restricts opportunities for business and harms consumers. The demand for complementary health has always been patient, or consumer-led, and decision makers have always lagged behind this demand in service provision. Health commissioners still lack innovative thinking, sticking to a safe list of treatments


and interventions which often don’t help patients and which many patients don’t want. They lack the vision to tackle the long term and growing health problems we have in


the UK. If business can learn from these failings in health, and are forward-thinking, innovative


and consumer-driven, then Brexit could prove to be the opportunity of a lifetime for those businesses willing to maximise its potential.


ABOUT DAVID TREDINNICK Father of two, former soldier David Tredinnick has been the MP for Boswick, Leicestershire, since 1987. He was born in 1950, and educated at Eton College, Mons Officer Cadet School, St


John's College, Oxford (M.Litt), and the Graduate School of Business at Cape Town University (MBA). David has been Chairman of the All-Party Group for Integrated Healthcare (PGIH) since 2002 (formerly Treasurer).


business network March 2017 27


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