PATIENTS may have access to fewer medicines after Brexit.

That was the warning from a Hampshire expert speaking at a London meeting.

Professor Saad Shakir, the director the Drug Safety Research Unit (DSRU) in Bursledon, told the conference at the Royal College of Physicians that it is unknown what will happen after we leave the EU, and that the current collaboration with European regulators and scientists must continue.

He explained that he had organised the meeting to encourage constructive solutions to assist the government’s Brexit negotiators.

Professor Shakir, who is also a GP, said: “We are a very specialised niche area. To us it’s about the health of our patients. We need to have an active discussion about our field."

The conference attracted 50 delegates and had speakers from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and the firms AbbVie and MSD.

The DSRU is a medical charity which carries out independent studies on medicines to see if there are any unexpected side effects.

They monitor data on patients taking new drugs on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, which are obliged to do these studies under EU law.

Virginia Acha, executive director at the ABPI, said there was a risk that if a new system was put in place, which made it more difficult and expensive for firms to introduce drugs in the UK, then access to drugs might be delayed.