The current uncertainty over Britain’s place in the EU seems to have some of the biggest ‘Big Pharma’ bosses worried. GSK and AstraZeneca have publically stated that Brexit would damage the pharmaceutical industry and isolate Britain from the science community.
But what would be the consequences of leaving the EU? And what would an independent UK pharma industry look like?
The first challenge would be the loss of access to the single market. It would mean pharmaceuticals – Britain’s fourth biggest export – becoming subject to EU tariffs, making them more expensive and less competitive compared to other EU manufacturers.
Single market access also embodies a group of institutions that the UK pharma industry depends upon to trade and innovate.
Britain’s membership of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) means that once a drug is approved it has single marketing authorisation valid throughout the EU, making approval faster and increasing market access.
Being part of the EU also allows the British pharma industry greater innovation through information sharing. As an EU member, Britain is automatically included in the European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA). In practice, this means key healthcare institutions like NICE and the MHRA can compare findings with European counterparts to strengthen policy. The loss of EUnetHTA membership would isolate the UK’s health policy think tanks, and lead to less international recognition of research done in the UK.
But for Britain’s pharma industry, by far the most detrimental consequence of leaving the EU would be loss of investment, with the UK set to miss out on £8.5 billion in science funding, according to Stella Creasy MP, member of the Commons Science and Technology Committee.
Without funding from the European Investment Committee, the UK could become less attractive to investors and suffer a similar fate to Switzerland, which over the last decade has received less than half of R&D funding received by the UK.
Leaders of the Out campaign claim that tighter EU immigration will benefit the UK, and this week Michael Gove insisted that the UK needed a rigorous points-based system. However, these arguments fail to recognise that many thousands of talented individuals come from all over the EU to staff our labs and research facilities. Losing this talent pool would create a skills shortage and could lead to an even bigger drop in investment.
For Big Pharma, leaving the EU goes beyond ‘Project Fear’ and the challenges facing the industry are all too real. The UK is set to lose potentially billions of pounds in research funding and could be excluded from research networks that hugely benefit the UK.
The EU has achieved a cohesive healthcare framework and leaving such a network would be detrimental. “Europe has gone from 27 fragmented, independent, not-talking-to-each-other regulatory authorities in the healthcare space to one. That’s a big deal,” said GlaxoSmithKline CEO Sir Andrew Witty.
If Britain intends to remain a centre for pharmaceutical research it must not act alone, but as part of an EU-wide movement.