Big pharma will stop investing in UK, warns eminent scientist Sir John Bell | Pharmaceuticals industry

Sir John Bell, an eminent scientist who gathered business and the government during the deployment of the COVVI-19 vaccine, warned that other large pharmaceutical companies will stop investing in the United Kingdom, after Merck’s decision to suppress its planned 1 billion pound research center.

Bell, a former Regius medical professor at the University of Oxford, said today on BBC Radio 4 that he had spoken to several leaders of large companies in the last six months “and they are all in the same space, and that is to say that they will no longer invest in the United Kingdom”.

He made the comments one day after Merck, known as MSD in Europe, said that he would withdraw research and development (R&D) in the United Kingdom with the loss of 125 scientific jobs, citing the lack of progress in the United Kingdom on investment in life sciences and the “global undervaluation of drugs and innovative vaccines by British successive governments”.

The Canadian immunologist, who was an early member of the government’s working group and previously worked on the Covid Vaccine of Oxford University with Astrazeneca, said: “It is a sign of something that has evolved a little, but it is now, I think, led to a whole series of events that will mean that the industry will stop investing in the United Kingdom.”

He said that the pharmaceutical industry “really has trouble in terms of price, especially in America”, where Donald Trump has exerted companies to reduce prices, and not to sell medicines at a much lower price.

A big problem is the amount of money that the NHS spends in drugs, he said.

“Ten years ago, we have passed 15% of our health expenses in pharmaceuticals. Now, it is 9%. The rest of the world, the OECD, is between 14% and 20%,” said Bell.

Long -term negotiations between the British government and drug manufacturers on the cost of drugs are broken last month.

As part of the price and voluntary access regime, companies agree to reimburse the NHS a certain amount of their British income from brand medicines. They now reimburse a quarter and a third of their income in the United Kingdom (23.5% to 35.6%), against discount rates of 5.7% in France and 7% in Germany, according to the association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

Bell said that Great Britain had a “great science in the academic world” and “large biotechnological companies” and infrastructure funded by the government, “but without large companies, this will not work”.

He added: “Large companies must work in a system where they can sell their products, and if they cannot sell their products here, they will do their business elsewhere.”

He said that the United Kingdom had been in this situation before and ” [the problems] By being a little more creative for what we have done. ” He referred to Cancer Drugs Fund, introduced in 2011 by Prime Minister David Cameron. The United Kingdom had lagged behind cancer medication, and the fund allowed it to buy innovative and more expensive drugs.

Bell has just retired as president of the Ellison Institute of Technology, founded by the American billionaire Larry Ellison, who briefly exceeded Elon Musk as the richest man in the world on Wednesday. At the beginning of this month, the Institute launched a new research program on AI vaccines at Oxford.