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U.K. Drug Industry Must Secure Post-Brexit Future, Report Warns

U.K. Drug Industry Must Secure Post-Brexit Future, Report Warns

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 U.K.’s biggest pharmaceutical lobby group.

The country must collaborate with ‘science allies’ such as the U.S., Canada and Australia in developing its post-Brexit medicines regulation or risk being left behind, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said in a report Monday. The U.K. 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 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the EMA appoints teams from different nations to assess new products, and the U.K. had typically shouldered at least 15% of the work. Now Britain has left the bloc, the EMA has moved to Amsterdam and the U.K. regulator must re-define its role on the world stage, the ABPI said. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the U.K.’s ability to punch above its weight relative to population size, authorizing 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 U.S. 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 U.K. must now capitalize on this momentum by creating mutual recognition agreements - pacts that recognize 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.

“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 U.K.,” said Colette Goldrick, the ABPI’s executive director for strategy and partnerships. “Diverging from global medicines standards for the sake of it would be destructive and undermine the attractiveness of” Britain.

The U.K. life sciences sector directly employs over 250,000 people and has a turnover of more than 80 billion pounds ($108 billion).

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.