Government meets pharma industry to ensure UK position

The government met with pharmaceutical industry chiefs yesterday to make sure the UK continues to bring in investment.

The meeting formed part of the Ministerial Industry Strategy Group (MISG) and discussions looked at how the Long Term Leadership Strategy, which aims to ensure that the UK remains an attractive option for the pharmaceutical industry, was progressing.

Jane Kennedy, minister for health and co-chair of MISG said: “The government wants the UK to maintain its position as a leading country for the pharmaceutical industry to develop medicines.

“We see from the taskforce indicators that the UK attracts 9 per cent of world pharmaceutical industry R&D expenditure while it has less than 4 per cent of the global market for medicines. We want to improve even further on this.”

Dr John Patterson, of AstraZeneca, said: “Historically the industry has invested strongly in the UK, and a quarter of the world?s top 100 medicines were developed in British laboratories.

“This joint initiative is very timely, since global competition for research, development and manufacturing are all intensifying and the UK needs to continue to develop positive reasons to do business here. We are therefore very committed to the success of this exercise, for the benefit of UK patients and of the economy.”

The MISG is now set to look at improving the rate at which effective new treatments are made available to NHS patients and increase cooperation between the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry.

The MISG also includes Bill Burns (chief executive of Roche Pharmaceuticals), Andrew Witty (of GlaxoSmithKline), Lord Sainsbury, minister for science and innovation at the Department for Trade and Industry and Richard Barker (director general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry).

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