The Spectator, in association with MSD, brought together MPs and representatives from Life Sciences on 20 th
Of all the industries that the Government has been keen to reassure since the Brexit vote, the life sciences sector comes out near the top. It’s no wonder: Britain is one of the best places in the world for life sciences, thanks in part to the five world-leading universities clustered around Oxford, Cambridge and London. It leads the way in emerging fields such as genomics. But the sector receives considerable funding from the European Union and relies on the kind of cross-border collaboration made easier because of Britain’s EU membership. So what is its future after Britain’s departure? That is the question that politicians, policy experts, academics and industry representatives discussed at a lunch at the Spectator offices last month, sponsored by the pharmaceutical company MSD.
Much depends on the nature of Brexit. The sector is keen for Britain to stay aligned on medicine regulation, as well as part of several EU directives and programmes. The Government has said that is what it’s aiming for – but it’s unclear, as yet, if the European Commission will agree, or at what cost.
One area of concern is clinical trials. EU regulation enables large-scale trials to be conducted easily at various sites across the continent. Professor Alastair Buchan, a neurologist and head of Brexit strategy at Oxford University, said such trials would not take place in Britain unless it stayed signed up to the same rules. ‘We will cross the road,’ he said. ‘We will do our trials in Europe.’
Another key programme is the European Research Area. Set up in 2000, it allows ‘free circulation of researchers, knowledge and technology’. The EU, through its framework programmes, distributes about £10 billion a year to research in this area. British researchers have received about a fifth of that. ‘For us to walk away from that is very careless,’ said Buchan. 'It's actually not about the money. It's about the tapestry of interwoven scholarship and access to collections.' Reduced access, Buchan said, will make it much harder for British universities to attract the world's best scientists.
British and EU collaboration on these programmes is particularly important now, said Beth Thompson, head of policy (UK and EU) at the Wellcome Trust, because other parts of the world are just starting to develop their own strength in life sciences. ‘There’s vast investment in places like South Korea,’ she said. The rest of Europe, of course, also benefits from Britain’s role in the programmes. ‘The EU needs us too,’ she said. ‘It’s on both sides of the Channel.’
Not all agreed that the EU had been good for science. Graham Stringer, Labour MP and member of the Commons select committee on science and technology, argued that the body had been a ‘drag on many areas of science excellence’, for instance resisting development on GM foods. The clinical trials directive, he said, was found to be ‘heavy-handed and difficult’, yet had taken 14 years to reform.
Britain outside the EU may also have more scope to set regulation in a way that encourages new areas of research. Sarah Haywood, CEO of MedCity, said any regulation agreed between large number of countries tended to lead to a ‘lowest common denominator’. In areas like gene or stem cell therapy, she said, more permissive regulation could act as a ‘positive driver for new markets’. Britain already has form on this: two years ago it became the first country in the world to approve mitochondrial donation therapy. Westminster has tended to be 'pragmatic and proportionate' in its approach to regulation, said Thompson: it has been liberal while putting in place tight controls.
Research is one part of the picture. For the industry, the ability to trade medicines freely across the Channel is also crucial. Delays at the border pose particular problems for vaccines, for instance, which can take years to develop and might not, say, survive a 30-hour wait in the heat.
The Government has made it a priority to protect the sector. It has signalled that it wants Britain to stay under the European Medicines Agency, which regulates drugs. Moreover, its industrial strategy has had life sciences at its centre. These efforts have paid off somewhat. Last year two pharmaceutical companies, MSD and Qiagen, announced they were setting up new research centres in Britain.
Jess Fine, external affairs executive director at MSD, said the strength of the science and talent base in Britain was ‘over-riding concerns about Brexit’, but that action was needed to ensure regulatory alignment and easy movement of goods, as well as continued access to the best talent across the world. In the long run, she said, Britain’s excellent ecosystem for the life sciences sector would remain, but action was required now to preserve it.