Nearly a year after the publication of the UK Life Sciences Sector Plan, Britain faces a stark contradiction. We remain one of the world’s leading drug-discovering nations, yet patients here are among the slowest in the developed world to access innovative medicines

As a nation, we have significantly higher levels of treatable mortality than comparable European countries: 71 deaths per 100,000 people, versus 50 in Belgium, 51 in Spain and 53 in Italy. Britain is becoming a country that discovers medicines for the world while failing to deploy them effectively at home.

Legislation announced in last week’s King’s Speech will allow patient data to be shared between GPs and hospitals, and create a single patient record as part of a £10 billion digitisation of the health service. This not only makes sense for individual patients but is a critical means to closing this gap.

Without data, you can’t bring patients into clinical trials. If we can’t cure illness, we should be studying it. Securely harnessing our world-leading health data as a strategic national asset can drive economic growth, support long-term NHS sustainability and improve patient outcomes.

But it’s not the only missed opportunity to date. Discovering and approving medicines through the MHRA, our world-leading regulator, is not the same as access.

The UK has one of the world’s strongest drug discovery ecosystems, repeatedly producing globally important medicines and generating enormous economic and clinical value. UK-discovered medicines have generated more than $300 billion in cumulative global sales and yet 1.2 million patients are missing out on Nice-approved medicines in key disease areas. Only 16 per cent of new medicines are taken up here after approval by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Only 37 per cent of new medicines are fully available to UK patients, versus 90 per cent in Germany.

More than 60 medicines have been delayed or not launched in the UK between 2019 and 2023, with more than two thirds of these delays driven by pricing constraints.

The government has now committed to doubling spending on innovative medicines as a share of GDP over the next decade from 0.3 per cent to 0.6 per cent. Meanwhile, the Nice threshold valuation QALY (quality adjusted life year) has risen from a range of £20,000 to £30,000, to £25,000 to £30,000.

Both are encouraging moves but patients are still missing out, and the UK is losing economically because policy still lags science. There has been a 58 per cent fall in life sciences foreign direct investment in two years, and there is a £1.3 billion annual research and development investment gap versus peers.

There’s cause for optimism following the publication of the positive Life Sciences Sector Plan last July. Faster clinical trials set-up times accelerate clinical research — now at an average 122 days, down from 169 days last year, and surpassing the original 150-day target.

The launch of the Health Data Research Service and digitalised single patient records will streamline researcher access to data assets. The medicines pricing agreement struck between the UK and US in the wake of President Trump’s tariff pressure has already helped unlock about £1.4 billion of pharmaceutical investment in Britain since December last year.

But it is a fundamental strategic mistake to celebrate these wins while undervaluing the adoption of innovative medicines and clinical research inside the NHS.

Britain is failing patients twice: first by not offering enough access to clinical trials, then by being too slow and inconsistent in adopting medicines once approved. The result is worse patient outcomes, avoidable deaths, declining investment and Britain failing to capture the value of its own science.

It’s a moral failure that so few patients are ever offered the choice to take part in clinical trials. The UK is not losing because our science is weak, we’re losing because our policy remains so.

Dame Kate Bingham is managing partner at SV Health Investors and is giving the Stevens Lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine on May 18