CEO Update: Monday 26 February 2018

This week is set to be a big week for Brexit news as we expect to see key positioning statements from the UK government and the official Labour opposition with a key focus on the customs union. The Prime Minister is expected to speak towards the end of this week following a special Cabinet meeting on Thursday. The speech follows the "war Cabinet" meeting at her country residence Chequers that was held last week to work out a forthcoming Brexit negotiations strategy.

An article in the Sunday Times from the usually well sourced Tim Shipman, suggests that the UK government is will seek associate membership of the EMA. The Sunday Times article quotes someone present at the war cabinet meeting who explained: “We are going to be associate members of various agencies on things like aviation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals and then we get [EU] market access and don’t need to have our products checked in more than one jurisdiction. We can decide at any time, in the full knowledge that there are consequences, that we don’t want to be regulated in this way.”

Labour set out their stall on post-Brexit EU relations this morning, including negotiating a “new, strong relationship” with single market rules and certain exemptions. Labour leader Jeremey Corbyn has been quoted as saying: “We cannot be held back, inside or outside the EU, from taking the steps we need to support cutting edge industries and local business, stop the tide of privatization and outsourcing or prevent employers being able to import cheap agency labor from abroad to undercut existing pay and conditions.”

On EU agencies perhaps there may be possible alignment between Labour and Conservatives, as the Labour leader said: “It makes no sense for the UK to abandon EU agencies and tariff-free trading rules that have served us well, supporting our industrial sectors, protecting workers and consumers and safeguarding the environment. If that means negotiating to support individual EU agencies, rather than paying more to duplicate those agencies here then that should be an option, not something ruled out because of phoney jingoistic posturing.”

In Europe, the General Affairs Council will be meeting and there will also be a meeting of the Heads of Medicines Agencies in Lisbon, where Europabio and EFPIA will be presenting industry positions on Brexit to them.

Also on Thursday, I will be meeting with minsters for the UK EU life Sciences Steering Group and we will update on progress in our next Brexit webinar. You can catch up on the Brexit webinar from last Friday on our YouTube channel here.

Sticking with Brexit, next Friday 9 March the Prosperity UK Life Sciences meeting will be held in Birmingham to discuss developing smarter approaches to ensure that UK life sciences thrive after Brexit. Speakers include George Freeman MP, Sir John Tooke, Dr Charlie Craddock, Dr Hakim Yadi, WMCA Mayor Andy Street and other practitioners, policy-makers and investors – you can register here.

Last week, we held the annual BIA Committee Summit, which brings together all of the expert advisory committees from the BIA to update on their priorities for the year ahead, which you can read on the committee pages on the BIA website. Thank you to so many members for coming along to the day and ensuring that the committees continue to support and guide the work of the Association. We also announced the launch of the new Genomics Advisory Committee that has been established to support the strategic objective that the UK starts, scales and builds world leading genomic businesses. Companies and organisations represented on the Committee at its launch include Congenica, Eagle Genomics, Genomics plc, Global Gene Corp, LGC ltd, NewGene ltd, Oxford Nanopore Technologies ltd and the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Also at the Summit, we held a seminar on the Nagoya Protocol. Government representatives Simon Trevenna and Katie Beckett introduced the Protocol and explained their approach to enforcement. Nigel Budgen then highlighted AstraZeneca’s compliance work, before Rocky Cranenburgh from Prokarium offered his SME-perspective. The presentation slides are available here. The Protocol remains a relatively unknown bit of regulation affecting our sector, but at the end of the seminar, a third of members in the audience thought the Protocol impacts their R&D. Big thanks to Simon, Katie, Nigel and Rocky for an interesting and useful session.

On the day of the Committee Summit the BIA published a new guide to the Patent Box, developed by members of the Finance and Tax Advisory Committee. FTI’s Richard Turner has written a blog which takes a look at the impact the Patent Box has had on the UK life sciences sector and introduces the new guide here.

And finally, the Ministerial Industry Strategy Group (MISG) Clinical Research Working Group (CRWG), a joint industry/Government group  has released the latest report on Clinical Trials in the UK, which demonstrates an encouraging position for UK clinical trials broadly across all trial phases. You can access the report here.

Keep an eye on the BIA website and twitter feed this week for updates on the latest policy activity.

Best, Steve