CEO Update - 9 June 2025
Positive news ahead of Spending Review (join our webinar this Friday), latest on getting pensions investment into UK life sciences and more!
Positive sector news ahead of the Spending Review – sign up for Friday’s webinar
It was pleasing to see new drug treatments and the life science sector in the top line of the HM Treasury press release this weekend ahead of the spending review. It commits the government to a transformative £86 billion boost to science and tech to turbocharge the economy, with regions backed to take cutting-edge research into their own hands.
Steve Bates OBE
CEO, BIA
The funding package, worth more than £22.5 billion a year in 2029, will boost Britain's world-leading status in research and innovation. We’ll see the full details in the spending review that will be announced on Wednesday, and we will be able to discuss the full story on Friday in our webinar, which I hope you will join us for. Sign up for the webinar.
New Pension Schemes Bill
The funding boost also comes as the new Pension Schemes Bill is introduced to Parliament. This will now become the crucible for the public debate on whether the UK pensions industry backs British innovation, including our sector. Hence, it's great to see influential FT columnist Martin Wolf joining our side of the debate, now convinced of the case for pension investment, “bias towards domestic productive assets”.
Under the proposed legislation, pension schemes will be required to publicly disclose their policy on investing in UK assets and explain how they are supporting growth in the domestic economy, and the Government will have the power to set minimum allocations to defined asset classes – putting into law the mandation powers BIA has called for. This shift is intended to encourage greater flows of capital from the £2.5 trillion UK pensions market into high-growth sectors like ours.
Business and Trade Committee: Industrial Strategy recommendations
The House of Commons Business and Trade Committee published its final report on the upcoming Industrial Strategy this week, outlining a number of recommendations to ensure the strategy is fit for purpose.
A number of these are aligned with those we’ve called for as the BIA. Perhaps most notable is the call for an increase in the amount of support given to the British Business Bank (BBB), to allow companies to scale up and commercialise. The committee also called for the merging of both the BBB and the National Wealth Fund (NWF) to present a more unified ‘single front door’ for investors. We’ve similarly called for a more cohesive offer for investors, and recently recommended that the NWF works in concert with the BBB to avoid any duplication of effort, but we know how important the specialism in our sector is that has been established within the BBB. That must be nourished and further built on.
London Tech Week meets Cambridge Wide Open Week in life sciences
Today sees the launch of London Tech Week, showing that the UK is the global home of TechBio. As Dave Roblin, CEO of Relation Therapeutics' letter in the FT today makes clear, “the UK is poised to lead a new industrial revolution at the intersection of biology and AI”. TechBio is becoming increasingly central to the UK’s future industrial strength. London Tech Week captures that ambition, and reminds us we have the infrastructure needed to lead in this space.
At the same time, Cambridge is throwing open its doors for Cambridge Wide Open Week (CWOW) and we’ll be there with TechBio X on Thursday. CWOW is a unique opportunity to see what goes on behind the closed doors of pioneering life sciences companies in Cambridge. The event also welcomes visitors from outside Cambridge, around the country, and across the world who are curious to see what’s going on ‘inside’ Cambridge.
Both events show the capacity of our networked communities to the globe – it's like Wimbledon and the Chelsea Flower Show rolled into one in a week for our sector, just more glamorous.
25th Parliament Day shows BIA impact
Last week, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of BIA’s Parliament Day — a milestone moment that underlined just how far our sector has come, and how vital sustained engagement with policymakers remains.
Since its inception, Parliament Day has been a unique platform for connecting the BIA life science community directly with Members of Parliament and key civil servants.
This year, we were hosted by key parliamentary figures Kit Malthouse MP, Baroness Delyth Morgan and Steve Yemm MP, all of whom reinforced the value of events like these in bridging the gap between the life science industry and public policy. It was great to see parliamentarians from across the political spectrum in deep discussion with BIA members on our key topics. This demonstrates that the BIA is listened to, respected and taken seriously by the most senior decision makers.
A quarter of a century in, Parliament Day remains one of the most impactful things we do, and I look forward to next year’s event being yet another success.
House of Lords Science and Technology Committee hearing
Last Tuesday, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, as part of its inquiry into financing and scaling UK science and technology, heard from Sir Jonathan Symonds CBE, chair of the board of BIA member GSK and Non-Executive Director at Genomics England. He said that, despite having one of the most attractive life sciences sectors and one of the strongest financial services industries in the world, these two sectors do not interact smoothly together.
Symonds stressed our key challenge: “when companies show themselves to have high potential and have capital needs, if the UK does not participate in the early stage, it loses the right to participate in the later stage… until we recognise the opportunity on our doorstep and deploy our capital we will lose the right to determine where those companies (UK start-ups) subsequently go.”
It’s great to see consistency of message from across the sector about capital investment needs.
Medicines Discovery Catapult funds KQ Labs
I was pleased to see the announcement that KQ Labs, the Francis Crick Institute’s start-up accelerator, has received funding and support from Medicines Discovery Catapult. This collaboration will “turn drug discovery into commercial breakthroughs” and is the type of acceleration programme that can get companies started on the right footing with rapid exposure to the skills and networks needed for success.
Have a great week. I hope to see you in either London or Cambridge, and if neither, virtually on the webinar on Friday, or perhaps on the plane to BIO at the weekend.
