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Hervey, Tamara K; Young, Calum Alasdair; Bishop, Louise E --- "Introduction" [2017] ELECD 573; in Hervey, K. Tamara; Young, A. Calum; Bishop, E. Louise (eds), "Research Handbook on EU Health Law and Policy" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 1

Book Title: Research Handbook on EU Health Law and Policy

Editor(s): Hervey, K. Tamara; Young, A. Calum; Bishop, E. Louise

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781785364716

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Hervey, Tamara K; Young, Calum Alasdair; Bishop, Louise E

Number of pages: 14

Abstract/Description:

As we complete and submit this manuscript, in early July 2016, it seems almost wrong for a book on EU health law and policy to be co-edited by three scholars in the United Kingdom. The referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU reverberates across the EU, with some even interpreting it as a portent for the end of the European project as we know it. Questions of health were among the key issues for the referendum debates in the UK. The now infamous claim on the ‘Leave battlebus’ that leaving the EU would release _350 million a week to be spent on the UK’s NHS was one of the first ‘promises’ of Leave to be revealed as a total fabrication. Claims that EU membership meant privatisation of the NHS via the backdoor of TTIP were not far behind in being exposed as inaccurate scaremongering by Leave. Among the concerns of the subsequently regretful Leave voters is access to free health care while on holiday in other EU countries. Much more seriously, the position of the many UK nationals living and working in other EU countries quickly became a significant anxiety. As did the position of non-UK EU nationals in the UK – especially those working in the health system. Provision of nursing care, in particular, would be quite simply impossible without the many EU nationals who provide the backbone of such care in the UK. A debate in the House of Commons on protecting the ‘acquired rights’ of EU citizens in the UK attracted significant media attention. Noticeable were the abstentions from a very large number of Conservative MPs, along with the inevitable statement from the Government that no promises could be made.