Following on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, could the Minister provide us with data in writing on the numbers of EU staff who have applied for jobs in healthcare in the last 12 months and the numbers of EU staff who have left? We need to have the data rather than bald statements about what is happening based on anecdotes, because it may well be that the Minister is hearing a quite different set of anecdotes from the ones the rest of us are hearing.
Will the Minister also confirm, or not, my interpretation of his comments on the outcome if there is no agreement? Here I return in part to Amendment 11, but to others as well. If there is no agreement with these regulations, will the Government then simply adopt European regulations de facto? I cannot see any other way for our pharmaceutical and biotech industries to continue to function. We need them for our economy, quite apart from needing them to ensure that there is a supply of medical and biotech advances for our patients. It is particularly important because biotech is an emerging field in which to date, within Europe, the UK has been the leader. I should declare an interest here because my son is a senior lecturer in bioengineering and cardiology, so he is involved in some of this ground-breaking work.
It would be helpful for us to know that and whether, in the context of there being no deal, the Government are already establishing dialogue between different Ministers in the devolved Administrations. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has pointed out, there are very real implications for Wales, particularly west Wales—I declare my interest as someone who lives and works there—because we know there are large gaps there. We have to know how the Government intend to behave in the event of there being no deal at all.
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