Government unveils life sciences sector plan - will it achieve great things?

The Plan starts with a rather negative backward-looking acknowledgement: "For too long, the journey from discovery to delivery has been too slow, too fragmented, and often held back by outdated systems." The Plan highlights some issues that have provided challenges that need addressing - poor quality of data for health research and the speed and cost of setting up a clinical trial; poor access to growth capital post Series B funding rounds; planning rules and regulations; poor MHRA performance in the early 2020s; low NHS prices and poor market access; and slow NHS uptake of innovation in medicines and MedTech. But the Plan then paints a bright vision for the future: "With the right leadership, the right investment, and the right partnerships, Life Sciences can be a cornerstone of both our economic renewal and our mission to build a fairer, healthier United Kingdom."

There is then the bold ambition to make the UK 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. In the opening words, there is a promise to make the UK the most attractive place in the world to develop and deploy new treatments and technologies. 
There are three strategic pillars:

1. Enabling World Class R&D.
2. Making the UK an outstanding place to start, grow, scale and invest.
3. Driving Health Innovation and NHS reform.

Key themes for life sciences had already been trailed in the Industrial Strategy, including:

• Having a better environment for 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 would be parallel approvals through the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) so as to have access to innovative products three to six months faster.
• Backing manufacturing with the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund with £520m.
• In line with the NHS 10 Year Plan, which was also recently published, the three NHS shifts - from treating illness to prevention (thought use of genomics and personalised medicine); moving patients from hospital to community (thought use of new diagnostics and digital tools); and analogue to digital (use of data and AI to improve outcomes and reduce pressure on NHS staff).
• There would be 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.
• Investment in promoting data with 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 to host one of the largest genomic research databases globally with over 500,000 genomes; £350m in Our Future Health to be the largest longitudinal health research cohort and clinical trials resource in the world with five million participants with their health data, genomic data and biobanked samples; and £20m in UK BioBank to enable proteomic analyses of the 500,000 participants alongside other multiomic data.

There is also mention of:

• The UK being a global leader in AI-drive life sciences through the AI Opportunities Action Plan and aligned Digital and Technologies Sector Plan - with cross-sector initiatives. There will be the appointment of national AI champions across the IS-8 (the eight growth sectors) including life sciences. The Plan also mentions the UK opportunities for TechBio - which combines biotechnology with data science.
• From 2026, the MHRA's digital platforms will far better support industry applications and enquiries and use AI where appropriate.
• Having a reformed, innovative-friendly UKCA medical device certification.
• Having more international reliance and recognition for medicines and medical devices - to make it easier where there has been approval overseas.
• The MHRA building on its reputation in AI and Software as a Medical Device to be the fastest, safest and quickest place to regulate AI and Software in the sector.
• MHRA working with the Regulatory Innovation office to see how AI in drug discovery can be better supported.
• MHRA being a world-leading brand and to establish itself as a leader of agile and proportionate regulation.
• Becoming a world leader in the uptake of off-patent medicines - saving £1bn over five years through taking up biosimilars. The Plan says this creates more space for innovation, thus a win-win.
• International focus - to improve cost and speed of life sciences trade and build international partnerships. This will be aligned to a new Trade Strategy. There is particular mention of renewing relationships with the EU and US, as well as engaging with other markets. There is also a desire to see areas in life sciences that have high export potential, such as successful uptake of technology within the NHS.

The two frontier industries - Pharmaceuticals and MedTech - get only a brief mention.

The industry has so far given the Plan a mixed reception. 

A key concern from industry had been the VPAG (Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth) pricing reimbursement scheme in the UK, which industry perceives as really putting the UK at a competitive disadvantage. The Government has brought forward a VPAG review to try to bring pharma back on side, but this was not resolved in time for the publication of the Sector Plan. The ABPI says that intensive discussions are in their final stages.

Meanwhile, GSK, BioNTech and Moderna have expressed support for the plan. Notably, though, there is nothing yet from AstraZeneca, which has recently been associated with possibly moving its stock market listing to the US.

Having reviewed the Plan, there are the headlines that were in the Industrial Strategy that was published in June. However, there does seem to be a lot of words saying the same thing. The Plan makes a big point about how the previous strategies and plans had been full of good words, but this is different because it is about delivering. So, let's see. There have been a lot of good documents in the past and this Plan does seem to try to appeal to a lot of different people including across different regions of the UK - so let's see what is actually delivered. The Plan does say that it will be crucial that the Government will work closely with industry in delivery. The jury's out until we see the impact and the implementation of this new Plan. The aim to have the UK as number one in Europe by 2030 and number three in the world by 2035 are bold - will this happen, and how will this be measured in the annual implementation updates that the Plan has trailed? Annex A does attempt to put some metrics and accountability in place - so it will be interesting to see if this is able to demonstrate achievement in putting the UK in the number one place in Europe and number three in the world. 

The 2026 PING Conference will look at Britain's place in the global pharma world 10 years on from the Brexit vote. If you have any thoughts on topics or speakers, or if you have any thoughts on the growth strategy around life sciences in the UK, please contact Paul Gershlick in our Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences team.