'Patients will suffer' Voices from the crisis in UK pharma

"We want to see more investment flow to Britain," the chancellor told big pharmaceutical firms this month, as she indicated that the government was willing to increase the price it pays for NHS drugs.

- Julia Kollewe

Ministers could announce their rethink on pricing by the end of this week. But the size of that rise is still uncertain. The big question is whether it will be sufficiently generous to make pharmaceutical companies - which account for almost £100bn of the UK economy - resume investments they had paused as part of a strong-arm campaign to secure concessions from the government.

Caught in the middle are the 163,600 people trying to navigate a career in biopharmaceuticals, which made sales worth £98.4bn in 2023-24. The trouble began in September with a surprise decision by the US firm Merck, known as MSD in Europe, to ditch plans for a £1bn research centre in London.

The announcement seemed to cause a domino effect. Nearly £2bn of UK pharma projects have been scrapped or paused so far this year, threatening more than 1,000 jobs.