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Sir Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit secretary, has urged the prime minister to seek to retain membership of groups such as the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Europol and Euratom.
Writing to the Financial Times, Sir Keir said it was important for Britain to seek a “co-operative future relationship” with the EU “not as members but as partners”. T
he letter — cosigned by Jonathan Ashworth, shadow health secretary — came after two senior ministers warned Brexiters that they ought to accept some continued regulation from Brussels of the life sciences sector.
Jeremy Hunt, health secretary, and Greg Clark, business secretary, said Britain needed to find a way to “collaborate” with the EU over pharmaceutical regulation, currently overseen by the EMA.
Sir Keir said Labour accepted the need for Britain’s relationship with the ECJ to change in the future. “But we reject the ideological and deeply unhelpful red line the prime minister has drawn that would prevent any future involvement of an EU-UK court-like body (over regulation), even when such an arrangement is demonstrably in the national interest,” he wrote.
“We have called for a more flexible approach that would make it far easier for Britain to stay inside common EU arrangements that benefit the UK,” he added. [...]
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