BIA submission to Budget 2021

The BIA has submitted to the Government's call for views ahead of the Budget on 3 March 2021.

On our submission, we called on the Government to:

• Launch a new Biomedical Catalyst competition in 2021 to support early-stage companies and maintain the pipeline of life sciences innovation
• Deliver the £200m Life Sciences Investment Programme complemented by a bold new co-investment fund of scale to unlock pension funds and other institutional finance to super-charge the growth of innovative UK biotech businesses  
• Deliver on the Conservative Party Manifesto commitment to include data and cloud computing in R&D tax credit eligible expenditure 
• Expand R&D tax credits to include capital expenditure to incentivise greater investment and support expansion of high-value manufacturing across the UK 
• Amend the commencement provisions of the PAYE cap to SME R&D tax credits to ensure fair treatment of genuine companies 
• Maintain tax advantaged employee share option schemes for SMEs and extend eligibility to allow them to compete for talent