\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>his year so far, some of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations in the world have withdrawn about \u00a32bn in proposed investment from the UK. One has even threatened to withhold new medicines from NHS patients. Taken together, it\u2019s hard not to conclude that big pharma is at war with the UK.<\/p>\n Merck has scrapped a \u00a31bn research facility, while AstraZeneca ditched a \u00a3450m vaccine lab and is rethinking an expansion of another research unit. Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) has cancelled 34 partnerships with the NHS in the last year, and Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novartis are all believed to have put investments \u201con hold\u201d. BMS is also threatening to play hardball with its new schizophrenia drug, saying it is \u201cprepared to make the difficult decision\u201d to \u201cwalk away\u201d if the NHS won\u2019t pay the price the corporation wants to charge.<\/p>\n One senior government official told the Financial Times that it appeared the companies were working together, saying that the machine-gun rapidity of the industry\u2019s threats \u201clooks very coordinated\u201d. They labelled the behaviour \u201csinister\u201d, and said they\u2019d \u201cnever seen anything like this before\u201d. (The chief of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said that such an accusation is \u201cvery serious\u201d and \u201ccategorically untrue\u201d.) Three NGOs, including the one I work for, have asked the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate this further.<\/p>\n One way to understand the industry\u2019s actions is as a full-scale capital strike, in which international capital refuses to invest in order to bully a government into concessions. In this case, the obvious point of contention is NHS drug spending. The industry has long had it in for the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice), the body that allows the NHS to judge the value of medicines and, in effect, negotiate prices down. And it is even less happy with the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth (VPAG), which allows the government to claw back some of its revenue when prices paid by the NHS rise too fast \u2013 a programme that the industry has labelled \u201cunsustainable\u201d. In short, big pharma hates the power the NHS has to force down its obscene prices. And it uses every opportunity to push back on this power.<\/p>\n The latest opportunity comes in the shape of Donald Trump. It is no coincidence that big pharma\u2019s screams became hysterical around the time of the US president\u2019s recent state visit to the UK. Trump needs to be seen to be dealing with eye-watering medicine prices in the US, the country where the drug industry really makes its money.<\/p>\n Traditionally, the US did little to contain medicine prices. Biden had started to confront the industry, forcing companies to negotiate prices. Trump\u2019s solution is different \u2013 true to type, he believes the problem is not profiteering corporations in desperate need of regulation, but freeloading foreigners. He\u2019s given pharma companies until the end of the month to start equalising global prices. No one knows what will happen next, though tariffs of up to 200% have been suggested.<\/p>\n In his tariff pact with Trump earlier this year, Starmer pledged to \u201cimprove the overall environment for pharmaceutical companies\u201d. Trump has not forgotten. In a \u201cfrosty\u201d meeting with Rachel Reeves earlier this month, the US\u2019s billionaire ambassador to London strongly pushed the chancellor to offer companies a better deal on drug pricing.<\/p>\n Big pharma uses any crisis as an opportunity to boost its already inflated profits. With Trump\u2019s support, it\u2019s determined to push its long-term goals.<\/p>\n It simply isn\u2019t the case that Britain pays too little for its medicines. Last year, NHS England spent close to \u00a320bn on medicines and devices. Research has repeatedly shown that branded medicines are actually too expensive, rather than too cheap, for the benefits they offer to patients, even with the rebates and clawbacks.<\/p>\n The truth is that big pharma is already one of the most profitable industries in the world. Diverting more of the NHS\u2019s stretched budgets to please these fantastically wealthy global corporations will not help patients. The science minister, Patrick Vallance, said this week that significant price rises were necessary to end the dispute. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has so far stood his ground, saying correctly that he\u2019s already made a generous offer. For all our sakes, the government must stand firm.<\/p>\n It probably is the case that Britain underinvests in medical research. But handing blank cheques to big pharma won\u2019t get us better drugs. Instead, we must seize this opportunity to end the stranglehold these companies have over our healthcare, and restructure the way we make our medicines. This will cost money. But medicines cost the public a fortune anyway.<\/p>\n We should work with countries across Europe to build world-class, publicly controlled medical research capacity. Then, rather than handing over that research to the pharma industry, we must develop a different model that allows for the sharing and licensing of research in a way that supports international collaboration to produce better medicines for all.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Matters of Opinion<\/span><\/p>\n Guardian columnists and writers on what they\u2019ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and more<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In the meantime, we need to build manufacturing capacity. The state doesn\u2019t have to produce every medicine we need, but we do need more public capacity so we can never again be held to ransom.<\/p>\n Finally, we should work with countries in the global south to help boost their research and production capacity too, breaking big pharma dominance internationally as well as nationally.<\/p>\n Big pharma thrives on domination, bullying and exclusion. The NHS was built on exactly the opposite principles. Let\u2019s take this opportunity to extend the values with which we administer our medicines to the way we produce them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This year so far, some of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations in the world have withdrawn about \u00a32bn in proposed investment from the UK. One has even threatened to withhold new medicines from NHS patients. Taken together, it\u2019s hard not to conclude that big pharma is at war with the UK. Merck has scrapped a \u00a31bn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1285,15215,558,5130,9160,261],"class_list":{"0":"post-25144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-big","9":"tag-dearden","10":"tag-government","11":"tag-nick","12":"tag-pharma","13":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}