The Institute for the Study of European Laws hosted a book launch for Hervey, Antova, Flear and Wood’s Not What the Bus Promised: Health Governance after Brexit, on 21 February 2024. People joined in person and online, from several countries, and including representatives from the third sector and private sector. The launch was chaired by Adrienne Yong, and speakers were co-authors Tamara Hervey and Mark Flear, with Charlotte Godziewski and Francesca Strumia as discussants.
The book is an output from several overlapping projects, especially an ESRC Governance after Brexit grant, led by Tamara Hervey, who is now Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at City, University of London. Mark Flear and Matthew Wood were co-investigators on the project; Ivanka Antova was the project’s post-doctoral research fellow. Charlotte Godzieski commented favourably on the scope, scale and amount of data reported on in the book, the levels and layers of the book, and the interdisciplinary approach. Despite all this complexity, she found the book very approachable, and remarkably easy to follow, even for non-experts.
The book’s core research questions include the following: The Leave Campaign’s implicit promise included that Brexit would involve improvements to the NHS. To what extent is this the case? To the extent that this is not the case, who should be held accountable, and how? What would make for a legitimate post-Brexit health governance?