16 October 2023

CEO Update - 16 October 2023

A bout of seasonal COVID has curtailed my week somewhat, but I’m still hoping to see many of you at TechBio UK this Wednesday which looks excellent.

This is our biggest autumn event and will focus on data-driven discovery for companies working at the interface between biotechnology and technology. It’s the focal point in the UK calendar for this fast, growing sector and community.

Labour Party conference in Liverpool

The life science agenda was prominent at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last week. It was good to hear Labour leader, Keir Starmer, celebrating the opportunities of technologies like gene editing and committing a future Labour government’s industrial strategy to focus on our sector. A full range of fringe meetings discussed the range of opportunities for our sector and it was great to be able to highlight the non-health opportunities of the buyer economy at our event in the Museum of Liverpool. The last in a series of conference blogs is available now.

Labour Party Conference fringe event — Speakers on a BIA panel held at the Museum of Liverpool (L-R): Will Milligan (Extracellular), Ros Le Feuvre (University of Manchester), Paul Blakeley (TBI), Jacob Nathan (Epoch Biodesign)

Autumn Statement weeks away

Government continues remorselessly and we are only a few weeks away from the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement on 22 November. This is always a major inflection point in the political year and we have made sure the Treasury knows what is top of our agenda through a formal submission and letter to the Chancellor. We have called for the R&D tax relief rate to be restored to its former internationally-competitive levels, a new initiative to train the next generation of superstar life science investors, and additional funds for British Patient Capital to support scaling life sciences companies.

Medicines pricing: statutory scheme consultation response

The BIA has submitted a formal response to the government's proposed statutory pricing scheme regulation. This is the process for pricing branded medicines in the UK.

A parallel discussion to negotiate a new voluntary pricing and access scheme remains ongoing between the ABPI and the UK government. Our preferred outcome is a new voluntary scheme, so we hope the discussion of a statutory scheme remains somewhat moot. However, it is the backstop to no deal – and as such we have major concerns about it. The principal one is that introducing new regulations, based on new principles, without new civil servants, in a few short weeks, is practically unworkable. This flies in the face of government Better Regulation proposals and I think it deserves a broad discussion between government departments and cannot be solely held close by the Department of Health.

AMR subscription model

In far more positive news, BIA recently submitted its response to the NHS consultation on proposals for the antimicrobial products subscription model. The consultation followed the success of the pilot project, which saw NHS England and NICE work together to determine a fixed annual fee for two antimicrobial drugs. Under the proposed new model, this approach will be extended to more antimicrobial products across the four nations of the UK. This will mean that the UK will be the first country in the world to implement a subscription-based payment model for antimicrobials, a significant step forward in developing the necessary global pull incentive to stimulate R&D investment in this space. In our consultation response, we set out a number of recommendations to make sure that the model works for companies of all sizes and rewards the most innovative approaches. Read our response. This shows the UK can develop world-leading policies in an understandable and engageable way for businesses, large and small.

Board elections: last chance to vote, AGM is next week

The deadline to vote in the BIA Board elections is this coming Friday. If you have not done so, please take the opportunity to review the excellent candidate statements and submit the voting form from your company. Our AGM for members is next Tuesday 24 October at 4.30 pm. To enable attendance from around the country we are once again doing this as a virtual meeting.