Drugs and other medical supplies to be shipped over on seven new ferry routes

The government has created a logistics hub in Belgium where vital medical supplies will be stockpiled to stop the NHS running short of equipment if there is a no-deal Brexit.

Stents, implants and other products needed to ensure that patient care is not disrupted will be stored at the hub, the exact location of which has not been disclosed.

The Department of Health and Social Care has also arranged to get NHS supplies – including drugs – into Britain using seven new ferry routes, to bypass the chaos that is widely expected in and around Dover in the event of no deal.

The Department for Transport has agreed to pay two companies, Brittany Ferries and the Danish firm DFDS, £88.8m to transport products from the hub across the Channel over the next six months. Suppliers, including pharmaceutical companies which will store their products elsewhere, will be given priority access to the ferries.

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The shortest route, Cherbourg in France to Poole in Dorset, will take four and a half hours while the longest, from Cuxhaven in Germany to Immingham in Lincolnshire, will be 16 hours.

The other routes will be Le Havre to Portsmouth, Roscoff to Plymouth, Caen to Plymouth, Vlaardingen in the Netherlands to Immingham and Vlaardingen to Felixstowe.

The hub will act as a warehouse for the wide range of supplies that hospitals, GP clinics and pharmacies will need in the event of no deal.

In a written ministerial statement on Tuesday, the health minister Stephen Hammond sought to reassure MPs that the in-depth nature of government planning should mean medical supplies would not be not affected.

The extensive preparations also include extra warehouse capacity in Britain to store medical supplies, drug firms stockpiling an extra six weeks of products, and daily flights from Maastricht in the Netherlands to Birmingham to bring in items that the NHS needs.

Hammond said: “While we never give guarantees, we are confident that if everyone – including suppliers, freight companies, international partners and the health and care system – does what they need to do, the supply of medicines and medical products should be uninterrupted in the event of exiting the EU without a deal.

“There is cross-government agreement that all medicines and medical products will be prioritised on these alternative routes to ensure the flow of all these products may continue unimpeded.”

However, the minister raised the possibility that some of the 500 over-the-counter medicines that come into the UK from the EU may become hard to obtain if there is no deal.

“For general sales list medicines, also known as over-the-counter products, 500 of which have an EU touchpoint, we have worked with NHS England to identify which are important for the management of specific health conditions, and are working with suppliers to assure contingency plans for those products,” he said.

Firms that supply drugs or medical goods would be offered the option of buying tickets on the ferry routes, Hammond confirmed. However, a leaked letter to suppliers last week from Steve Oldfield, the DHSC’s chief commercial officer, made clear that the department was “unable to guarantee access to any particular route at this stage” under the scheme.

The DHSC is referring to the arrangement as the “dedicated NHS shipment channel”. An official said the hub was “one small part of the preparations we are making”.

Niall Dickson, the co-chair of the Brexit Health Alliance and chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “Today’s detail about additional freight capacity, airplane use, buffer stocks and extra warehouse space will help to support local preparations. This is vital because around three-quarters of the medicines and over half the clinical consumables we use come from, or via, the European Union.”