Paul Naish, the UK head of market access for French drugmaker Sanofi, has criticised Britain’s environment for pharmaceuticals, stating it is “not a good place” to develop or sell drugs. He urged the government to produce a “proper” roadmap for increasing spending on new treatments, warning that the country is at a “critical point”.
Naish’s comments come after MSD abandoned a £1bn research centre in London and Eli Lilly paused its planned gateway lab. Sanofi itself has reduced clinical trials in the UK by 50% over the past two years, despite a large pipeline of new drugs. The company paused expansion plans six months ago, awaiting “tangible progress” to improve the life sciences environment.
The NHS now spends just 9% of its total healthcare budget on medicines, compared with 14% in Germany, 15% in the US, and 17% in Italy and Spain. Naish highlighted that the price thresholds set by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) have not changed since 1999, and called for them to be raised. The pharmaceutical industry also wants the clawback rate—currently between a quarter and a third of UK revenues—reduced to single digits.
Naish described a “battle happening within government” between health officials and the Treasury, with business and science departments “sympathetic but hand-wringing”. He called for a cross-departmental plan to align UK spending with other countries. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry supports updating Nice thresholds in line with inflation, while the Department of Health and Social Care is reportedly seeking to reopen talks on drug pricing.
