Britain’s attitude towards its leading edge medicines industry has long been strangely cool.
The NHS has preferred cut-price generic drugs to pioneering treatments which could empty hospital beds.
Labour, most notably the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, viewed big pharmaceutical companies as ‘rip-off’ merchants who could afford to take the punishment of what effectively has been a rising stealth tax on sales into the health service.
Despite the role of AstraZeneca in saving countless lives at home and overseas with the production and marketing of the Covid 19 vaccine, the Government refused to back investment in a Liverpool plant, which dramatically would have improved Britain’s health security.
It has taken a tough-minded American trade negotiating team, seeking to obtain better terms of trade for US-developed compounds in Britain, to untie a Gordian knot.
The main concern must be that the long delays in reaching a pharma agreement, and Labour’s cackhanded approach to the NHS rebate, already have done irreparable harm.
US investment: Both UK pharma giants, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline have unveiled big new American R&D and production facilities
Both UK pharma giants, AstraZeneca and GSK, already have indicated that the greater opportunities stateside need to be embraced. The pair have unveiled big new American R&D and production facilities.
Even though it makes sense to be closer to one of the world’s biggest markets, one cannot but worry that a big opportunity for Britain has been wasted.
I recall Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s single-minded chief executive, telling me post-Brexit how the UK and the NHS had the chance to lead the world on pharma innovation.
Britain had the best scientists and universities, controlled its own fate in drugs approval in the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and a unique test bed in the NHS.
There are rare examples of the NHS embracing such opportunities, such as the full-scale study being done on the efficacy of GSK’s shingles vaccine Shingrix in the treatment of Alzheimer’s.
The value-for-money agency Nice has kicked life-saving new medicines such as the pioneering breast cancer drug Enhertu, which could transform the lives of thousands of women, into the long grass because of cost.
Similarly, weight-loss drugs such as Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro, which offer relief to diabetes and hypertension sufferers, are only available to very limited groups of patients.
Under the new deal with the US, there is a better chance of NHS patients gaining access to these medicines. British-based drug companies will have direct access to the American market tariff free.
That is an advantage the UK has been able to gain because it doesn’t have to deal with the lumbering bureaucracy of the EU and its need to pander to the national interest of Continental drug companies.
In return, Britain has agreed to up the price it pays for new medicines coming from the US by 25 per cent.
This predictably has aroused the ire of NHS lobbyists who argue it will have to come out of existing budgets.
After receiving a £29billion boost in Rachel Reeves’ first Budget, it might be argued more advanced treatments could be more efficacious than alleged improvement in waiting lists for appointments.
Doctors and patients regard the outcomes from extra appointments as meaningless in practice.
The deal also means Streeting’s attempts to squeeze big pharma are to be reversed. The charge under the rebate scheme will revert to 15 per cent next year.
That represents a triumph for Science Minister Lord Vallance who has argued that the NHS needs to spend more on medicines.
There are also grounds for hope that new drugs, such as ground-breaking immunology treatments for cancer, will have more chance of getting through the Nice process with the price threshold being raised.
Some 18 months into the Starmer government the US-UK deal should be good for both sides and most importantly patients.
The dispute over the NHS rebate already has caused several US and home-grown pharma companies to cancel or pause research projects in the UK.
It must be hoped that poor decisions by Labour politicians have not done lasting damage to investment in British science and an industry which has much to offer in terms of jobs, exports, dividends, and better medical outcomes.
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