Britain's pharma industry urges Chancellor to unlock UK life sciences potential

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has outlined four key areas, in which the new government can unlock the potential of the UK's life science sector.

It comes ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves' first Labour Budget this month for 14 years.

One measure, it suggests, is to deliver a globally competitive regulatory system, which supports innovation and enhances patient access to new medicines.

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It supports giving the MHRA the resources it needs to do so and also wants to see ring-fenced resourcing for a refreshed and relaunched Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP).

"Our industry wants to see a budget with support for innovation and improving UK international competitiveness at its heart," said Richard Torbett, the chief executive of the ABPI.

"This must be underpinned by a new industrial strategy which recognises the huge untapped growth potential of life sciences and understands the link between the commercial environment for medicines and attracting greater investment from leading global companies."

The pre-budget submission to the Chancellor from the ABPI can be seen in full HERE.

The organisation also wants to incentivise investment and boost UK competitiveness. It wants to push ahead with the £520 million Life Sciences Manufacturing Capital Grants Facility, setting a longer-term ambition to increase funding in the event of oversubscription.

It also urges the Chancellor to improve UK attractiveness for industry research and development (R&D) by setting out an ambition for the UK to achieve the highest level of public R&D investment in the G7 before the end of this parliament.

"The Chancellor has the opportunity to supercharge the UK as a destination of choice for industry investment in discovery phase and clinical research by targeting public R&D investment toward two key areas," noted ABPI.

"The first is a major cross-sector UK initiative to develop new technology to help better understand diseases and more efficiently develop new medicines. The second would be to establish an internationally competitive dedicated health data research service."

Finally, it urges the UK to realise the full benefit of innovative medicines and vaccines.

"The UK is failing in its duty to treat people with severe conditions in a way the public would expect by unnecessarily restricting access to effective medicines for severe conditions over cost concerns, which the Voluntary Scheme already addresses," it said.

"We urge the Chancellor to give NICE permission to abandon the opportunity-cost-neutral approach to implementing its severity modifier. More broadly, the Chancellor should enable NHS England (NHSE) to update the NHS Commercial Framework to ensure better patient access to innovative products."