UK drug industry must secure post-Brexit future, says report

Bloomberg

Britain must work with other countries to prevent friction on medicine rules post-Brexit to avoid being sidelined by the global drug industry, according to a report from the UK’s biggest pharmaceutical lobby group.
The country must collaborate with ‘science allies’ such as the US, Canada and Australia in developing its post-Brexit medicines regulation or risk being left behind, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said in a report. The UK makes up just 2.4% of the global drug market and could lose influence if obstacles are created for manufacturers here, the ABPI said.
Before Brexit, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency was a key contributor to Europe’s drugs regulation, with the European Medicines Agency even based in London. Europe’s equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration, the EMA appoints teams from different nations to assess new products, and the UK had typically shouldered at least 15% of the work. Now Britain has left the bloc, the EMA has moved to Amsterdam and the UK regulator must
re-define its role on the world stage, the ABPI said.
The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the UK’s ability to punch above its weight relative to population size, authorising the first coronavirus vaccine in the Western world in December and presiding over a strong rollout of the shots, with take-up ahead of most of Europe and the US Britain also became the first in the world to approve Merck & Co.’s antiviral pill last week, one of the few treatments for the disease.
The UK must now capitalise on this momentum by creating mutual recognition agreements – pacts that recognise regulatory standards as equal – with trading partners on things like batch testing, according to the ABPI. Batch testing of products rose to prominence during the pandemic as drugmakers tried to scale-up vaccine production as quickly as possible and avoid unnecessary regulatory hurdles slowing exports of the shots down.
The UK life sciences sector directly employs over 250,000 people and has a turnover of more than $108 billion per year.
“As the government begins to set out what Britain being a science superpower outside of the EU means, this is the perfect time to look at the important policies which attract companies to launch their products here in the UK,” said Colette Goldrick, the ABPI’s executive director for strategy and partnerships.