Government must support UK science firms in shouldering cost pressures, says ABPI president
The Government must help paint a positive picture for the pharmaceutical industry via increased support, so that CEOs feel encouraged to shoulder the cost pressures hitting the sector, the president of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) told City A.M.
The industry is currently navigating staff shortages, inflation as well as dwindling investment, which risks further jeopardising the UK’s falling productivity levels.
Some 90 per cent of medicine prices cannot be hiked in the face of rising costs, “so we’re having to absorb inflation pressures,” Pinder Sahota explained.
The ABPI represents pharmaceutical heavyweights such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Merck and GSK.
“There is real doom and gloom at the moment here in the UK. Inflation, energy prices, the war, strikes – it just feels like a pretty depressing environment,” Sahota added, noting that many of the industry’s bosses are wondering: “How stable is the environment that we’re in?”
Sahota called on the new Prime Minister to build on Boris Johnson’s pledge to make Britain a science superpower by 2030, by focusing on the opportunity to bolster the economy.
The UK currently has the lowest spend on medicine in the G7.
“The worrying thing is our share of global pharma R&D has been declining over the past 10 years. In 2012, our share of global R&D spend was 7.7 per cent, but in 2020 that umber moved to 4.2 per cent,” he said, citing figures from a PwC report in June, conducted on behalf of the ABPI.
“That’s something that the Government needs to focus on,” Sahota continued. “We’re being outcompeted because other countries will put the right incentives for R&D in place.”
There is a lot to be gained from the next Cabinet realising Johnson’s ‘science superpower’ pledge.
“If we can encourage more research and manufacturing to be done here in the UK… Then that has a positive impact on improving the health of the nation and workforce productivity,” he said.
The Government must also help ease the shortage of talent, particularly of data scientists and engineers, being channelled into the pharmaceutical space.
“We do really need greater numbers,” he added. “These are skillsets that other sectors are after as well.”