Government Industrial Strategy targets UK in top three life sciences economies in 10 years
The Government has published its new 10-year Industrial Strategy. It was developed in collaboration with businesses and aims to make the UK the best place in the world to invest, generate growth, and create jobs across all regions. Eight growth sectors (the IS-8) are the focus, including life sciences, digital/AI, and advanced manufacturing. Others are clean energy, defence, finance, professional and business services, and creative industries.
The Strategy highlights in particular that advances in life sciences, clean energy and AI can profoundly reshape the economy and enable huge advances in productivity and our ways of life. It emphasises some UK strengths, notably that we are open, entrepreneurial and champions of global trade. We have world-leading finance, universities, scientific institutions, workforce, legal and regulatory frameworks. It also claims that we have political stability, a commitment to the rule of law, net zero and we have restored our international standing.
It claims that business as usual will not work - there will need to be change. In particular, new relations between Government and business, so that the Government can create strategic certainty, enabling businesses to create wealth. Throughout, there are references that show the UK is serious about leading the way on progress towards net zero. It goes on to say that the Government will invest in the UK's comparative advantage and back growth and productivity. It has been said that the State must not both stand back and interfere too much. It wants to create the right environment to make the UK the best country to invest in anywhere in the world.
The Strategy encapsulates the following principles:
- Strategic targeted interventions - there will be targeted interventions across R&D, skills, finance, infrastructure, planning and regulation to support the IS-8.
- Open International Trade - the Government seeks stronger trade relationships, especially with the EU, and for the UK to be open to global markets. The Strategy highlights the new deals with the US, EU, India and Japan as well as engagement with China, including mentioning the deal with the US, which will keep tariffs for UK exporters down; whilst the Free Trade Agreement with India will reduce barriers and support opportunities across high-growth sectors.
- Ease of investment and engagement - the Government aims to reduce barriers and mobilise private capital as well as making it easier to navigate government. This involves reforms to the Office for Investment and creating a National Wealth Fund.
- Capitalising on the value of data.
- Having a supportive tax system for business - including corporation tax rates, R&D tax credits and Patent Box.
- Growth across specific geographic hubs where there are opportunities, but also ensuring that it spreads to include other areas.
- Stability and oversight - Genuine partnership with business and a new Industrial Strategy Advisory Council to oversee delivery.
Specifically in relation to the life sciences sector (which the Strategy highlights as focused on pharmaceuticals and medical technologies as frontier industries for growth), the Strategy targets the UK as being one of the world's top three life sciences economies by 2035 (after the US and China) and the most important in Europe by 2030. To get there, there has been an acknowledgement that the UK needs to do better in regulation and clinical trials, with faster setting up and approvals of commercial trials. There is a target to reduce trial approval times to less than 150 days and to approve the O'Shaughnessy reforms, with a target of doubling commercial interventional trial participants by 2026 and again by 2029. There will also be a plan to enable parallel approvals through the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to enable faster access to innovative products. In addition, there are proposals to back manufacturing with the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund with £520m. Other plans include incentives to encourage shifts from treating illness to prevention, to move patients from hospital to community, and from analogue to digital.
The Government wants to see at least one strategic partnership with a leading life sciences business each year, and a dedicated support service to help 10-20 high-potential UK companies to scale and remain in the UK. There will be a package of reforms and investment including up to £600m for a Health Data Research Service to create the world's most advanced, secure and AI-ready health data platform uniting genomic, diagnostic and clinical data at scale; £650m over five years in Genomics England; £350m in Our Future Health; and £20m in UK BioBank.
There will also be a Sector Plan for each of the eight sectors, expanding on each of the highlights from the Industrial Strategy.
The Government has talked about growth being its number one mission. It is good to see the strategy around that published, with life sciences being a core focus. This has included looking at some of the areas where the UK has fallen behind particularly in the post-Brexit years and how to improve on that - particularly around regulatory approvals, clinical trials and faster access to innovative medicines, and creating the right environment for companies to grow and remain in the UK. Also of interest is the desire to strengthen international relations - echoes of the "Global Britain" promised in a post-Brexit world.