\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>hat\u2019s gratitude, eh? It\u2019s not even a fortnight since the government agreed to raise the prices the NHS pays for new medicines and here comes the boss of GSK, Britain\u2019s second largest pharma firm, to extol the virtues of doing business in the US.<\/p>\n The US is \u201cstill the leading market in the world in terms of the launches of new drugs and vaccines\u201d, said the chief executive, Emma Walmsley, in a BBC interview, explaining why GSK invests about three times as much over there as it does at home. Alongside China, the US is also \u201cthe best market in the world to do business development\u201d.<\/p>\n Her comments have caused a stir but, actually, are merely a statement of reality. It would be absurd to pretend the UK has suddenly shot to the top of the competitiveness table in life sciences as a result of the multipronged price and tariffs deal at the start of this month.<\/p>\n Yes, the UK retains excellent research facilities, links with universities and other soft \u201cecosystem\u201d benefits \u2013 successive governments\u2019 boasts about the UK being a life sciences \u201csuperpower\u201d are not wholly fanciful. But the US remains streets ahead in terms of what it spends on new drugs, the depth of its research and manufacturing bases and the funding its startups and biotech businesses can raise. That\u2019s just how things are.<\/p>\n But, as Walmsley also said, this month\u2019s deal on NHS prices and tariffs is welcome. Critics complain the terms represent a capitulation to big pharma and Trump. But what else was the government supposed to do? If it is serious about the \u201csuperpower\u201d stuff, it had to avert tensions that existed long before the president threatened to impose tariffs at nose-bleed rates on UK pharma exports to the US.<\/p>\n <\/span>GSK\u2019s Emma Walmsley is the latest UK pharma chief to talk up opportunities in the US.<\/span> Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Quarrels over NHS pricing were plainly related to lost investments in the UK, such as Merck\u2019s scrapping of a \u00a31bn \u00adresearch centre in London. One issue was the complicated \u201cvoluntary\u201d price scheme, which tries to promote innovation while protecting the NHS budget via a cap. Companies\u2019 rebate payments have been unpredictable and last year\u2019s tally was 23% of sales, far above comparable rates in other large European countries. The other issue is the price the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) allows the NHS to spend on life-extending drugs.<\/p>\n The deal wrapped the items together. The UK got zero tariffs on exports to the US for three years. The price rebate was capped at 15%. And Nice raised its baseline price thresholds by 25% at the lower end.<\/p>\n Cue the complaints about NHS budgets being diverted from frontline equipment and hospitals. Yes, that is undeniably a risk: the health service\u2019s spending on pharmaceuticals will rise by \u00a33bn a year. But the alternative was less investment in the UK, which might create even more pressure on budgets over time and even less access for patients to new medicines. In a world of trade-offs, and from a tricky negotiating position, the government looks to have landed in roughly the right spot. A deal had to happen, as argued here many times.<\/p>\n Walmsley called it \u201ca step in the right direction\u201d, which is positive but not a five-star review. That is probably also fair. The plan is for the UK to double to 0.6% the percentage of GDP spent on new medicines over a decade, which leaves plenty of time for tensions to flare again. Meanwhile, the terms of the post-2029 \u201cvoluntary\u201d scheme also have to be negotiated.<\/p>\n But other projects are happening in the wings, such as the \u00a3600m-backed Health Data Research Service, which aims to \u201cturbocharge access to NHS data for researchers\u201d by exploiting the health service\u2019s strength as a unified system. At a time when the government\u2019s industrial strategy seems to be moving in slow motion on several fronts, the position in life sciences could easily have been worse. It\u2019s just that the pull of US will, undeniably, remain strong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That\u2019s gratitude, eh? It\u2019s not even a fortnight since the government agreed to raise the prices the NHS pays for new medicines and here comes the boss of GSK, Britain\u2019s second largest pharma firm, to extol the virtues of doing business in the US. The US is \u201cstill the leading market in the world in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1120,696,5222,6770,4167,9160,4168,1070,2188],"class_list":{"0":"post-36956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-boss","9":"tag-deal","10":"tag-dominance","11":"tag-gsk","12":"tag-nils","13":"tag-pharma","14":"tag-pratley","15":"tag-uks","16":"tag-vital"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36956","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=36956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}