Industry representatives have said drug companies in Wales have been distracted from creating new medicines as they are “wasting” time and money preparing for a no deal Brexit.

The UK Government wants pharmaceutical firms to stockpile an extra six weeks worth of medicine in case of no deal.

The BBC reports pharmaceutical companies in Wales have said “robust plans” were in place but money could be better spent on drugs.

Dr Richard Greville, the Welsh branch director of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), said “The deadlock is a challenge for the industry. Because of the global nature of the industry, the supply, the frictionless movement of goods is absolutely critical because some medicines are manufactured in the UK, some medicines are manufactured in the EU and some medicines are manufactured in the rest of the world. But, basically, if you are a patient in Wales who needs access to that medicine no matter where it’s been manufactured you want the access to that medicine to be unrestricted.”

The EU and UK have agreed to a text for the Brexit withdrawal agreement, however MPs are likely to vote against it.

Richard Greville said businesses are spending as much as £100m preparing for Brexit. He said “It would be a great pity if it was entirely wasted but perhaps, more importantly, the waste would perhaps have been best spent in developing and creating new medicines, which would have been of far greater use to patients across the world.”

About forty five million packs of medicine go from the UK to the EU27 every month and thirty seven million packs travel in the other direction. They need to be licensed, tested and certified by qualified staff and, as it stands, a test in the UK is valid in the EU and vice versa, but that would not be the case in the event of no deal.

Two companies based in Wrexham are looking to set up extra bases in Ireland to test and distribute UK produced drugs to the EU.

Nick Davies, who runs French-owned Ipsen’s site where four hundred people are employed, said “Brexit is a distraction for the organisation and for the UK pharmaceutical industry and setting-up parallel laboratories in Ireland to repeat testing that we’re doing in the UK already can definitely be seen as wasted resource.”

Sirjiwan Singh, the managing director of Wockhardt UK, which supplies generic drugs to the NHS, said “Doing all the activities two times from a regulatory, licensing and all that mechanisms, that is going to have a major impact on us.”