A senior pharmaceuticals executive has called on the government to come up with a \u201cproper\u201d roadmap for raising spending on new medicines, saying Britain is \u201cnot a good place\u201d to develop or sell drugs.<\/p>\n
Paul Naish, the UK head of market access for the French company Sanofi, said Britain was \u201cat a critical point\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe\u2019ve still got the best universities, we\u2019ve got some of the best scientists in the world, but it\u2019s not a good place to do the development work for medicines. It\u2019s an expensive place to operate, and it\u2019s a terrible place to sell medicines.\u201d<\/p>\n
The drugmaker MSD, known as Merck in the US, this week ditched its under-construction \u00a31bn research centre in London<\/a>. The announcement was a big blow to a life sciences sector hailed by the government as \u201cone of the crown jewels of the economy\u201d.<\/p>\n Sanofi, which invests \u00a335m a year in research and development in the UK out of \u00a36.7bn globally, has carried out 50% fewer clinical trials in the country in the past couple of years, despite a large pipeline of new drugs.<\/p>\n Six months ago, heartened by the health secretary, Wes Streeting\u2019s, three-point plan to fix the health sector<\/a>, the French firm explored expanding its clinical trials in the UK. But any substantial investment is now on pause until there is \u201ctangible progress towards making the life sciences environment internationally competitive\u201d.<\/p>\n Last year, Sanofi closed the laboratories in Cambridge it had acquired with the biotech company, Kymab, and transferred the work to Boston, US.<\/p>\n Naish said there was a \u201cbattle happening within government\u201d where officials in the health departmentstruggled to make a strong case to the Treasury and officials in the business and science departments were \u201csympathetic but hand-wringing\u201d.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cThere needs to be a proper plan from Treasury, sat down with the other departments, for what raising the spend to be more in line with other countries looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n The NHS\u2019s outlay on medicines has fallen to 9% of total healthcare spending, compared with 14% in Germany, 15% in the US, and 17% in Italy and Spain.<\/p>\n The price thresholds set by the National Institute for Health<\/a> and Care Excellence, the body that assesses which drugs can be offered on the NHS, have not moved since 1999.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: 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<\/a> 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<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Naish called for them to be raised, echoing comments from other industry figures, including AstraZeneca\u2019s UK president, Tom Keith-Roach. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry wants the thresholds updated in line with inflation.<\/p>\n The industry also wants the clawback rate \u2013 drugmakers have to pay back to the NHS between a quarter and a third of their UK revenues \u2013 reduced to single digits, similar to levels in other European countries.<\/p>\n Officials in the DHSC are reportedly attempting to reopen talks with pharmaceutical companies over drug pricing and market access, according to the Financial Times<\/a>. Last month, drugmakers rejected an ultimatum from Streeting<\/a> over his latest offer on NHS drug pricing.<\/p>\n