CBI Director General Speaks Out about the Future of Pharma in the UK

For those of you who didn’t catch Channel 4 News on Monday night, there was an interesting piece on the future of the UK’s Pharma industry.   Director General of the CBI (Confederation of British Industry), John Cridland, spoke out about his concern for the UK Pharma sector in light of the 2,400 jobs to be lost from Pfizer in Sandwich.  While visiting Eli Lilly’s Surrey facility, Mr Cridland stated that he thinks “the Government has taken the sector a little bit for granted.”   In spite of the Government claiming that the Pfizer closure was an isolated case, Mr Cridland pointed out that there have been several thousand additional job losses from Pharma in the UK over the last three years.

Aside from the shift within the sector away from large campuses run by the multinationals to smaller start-up organisations, the suggestion was that there are additional factors specific to the UK which impede investment in the sector.  For example, the Patent Box proposal (see my earlier blog), while a step in the right direction, favours domestic domiciled companies, but does less to encourage the foreign investment we will need to keep the sector buoyant.