Why Horizon is key to Britain’s lead in pharma

Britain reaps great competitive advantages from its brilliant world leading research universities and life sciences discoveries. Our big pharma companies AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline punch way above their weight in immunology treatments for the most deadly cancers, vaccines for respiratory illness, HIV and much more.

Glaxo, led by Dame Emma Walmsley, is responsible for the bestselling shingles vaccine Shingrix. Astra is behind the heart disease and diabetes compound Farxiga which rapidly has acquired blockbuster status, bringing in more than £1 billion a year.

A government which aspires to turn Britain into ‘a science and technology superpower’ needs to bolster spending and taxes for research and development.

It must also ensure that great research institutions – such as the Francis Crick Institute in London and laboratories at universities – continue to attract the best and brightest from Europe.

When Rishi Sunak signed the Windsor Framework on Northern Ireland last April he secured an agreement with the EU that Britain would return to the £82 billion Horizon programme. This connects UK research institutes and universities to their Continental counterparts. The deal was seen as being as important to Brussels as to London because UK science has commanded such respect in Europe.

Horizon offers a path to higher productivity, innovation, growth and eventually greater prosperity.

Unfortunately, due to pettifogging bureaucracy and infighting in government, the urgent return of the UK to the programme has been postponed.

There are even suggestions at the Treasury that an alternative, less costly British initiative known as Pioneer could be a cost efficient alternative.

Much of Britain’s science and research establishment is horrified by the prospect. Even allowing for the anti-Brexit sentiment at universities, the frustration about the UK going it alone is palpable.

Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse, who heads the Crick, has urged the Prime Minister ‘to finalise the agreement’ with Europe ‘without delay’.

Failure to do so, he argues, could sever connections to the Continent which are among the UK’s great research strengths.

The damage is already being seen in the dramatic fall in European funding for UK scientific advancement. In 2019, Britain scooped £813 million spread across 1,364 grants. This has slowed to a trickle with just 192 grants and £19 million flowing across the Channel in the year to July.

At the core of the delays is an old-fashioned financial dispute of the kind which we all became used to in the days of European Union membership.

The difference this time around is that every day of delay sees research programmes turned away and overseas scientists decamping to foreign pastures. Over the longer haul that could be disastrous.

Similarly, our big pharma companies, which are investing heavily in British medical research, complain bitterly that the level of support received during the pandemic has dissipated.

They say that both the NHS – as a ready-made resource for trials – and the regulatory agencies are failing to rise to the post-Brexit challenge.

This is in spite of AstraZeneca’s investment in a £1 billion open research centre in Cambridge and Glaxo’s support for a £600 million facility in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

AstraZeneca, the most valuable company in the FTSE 100, says it regards signing up to Horizon as a step to ensure the UK ‘is a trustworthy partner and attractive location for life sciences’.

Pioneer, as a standalone initiative, would struggle to replicate what Horizon is doing and what previous EU deals have contributed to British scientific endeavour.

The disagreement holding up Horizon is over setting up a mechanism so that the UK does not end up out of pocket if it gains less from the scheme than it has contributed to the budget.

The concern about coming out second best is understandable. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is determined to get an iron grip on government spending. He is fearful that a drip-drip of new spending together with the ballooning interest payments on the national debt would add to inflation.

That in turn would undermine the fragile confidence in UK governance, which is still suffering as a result of the brief Liz Truss-Kwasi Kwarteng tax-cutting experiment.

But the whole experience of UK science and research co-operation with Europe so far shows British universities and institutions have come out well.

UK innovation and start-ups have reaped the richest reward. One suspects that the alternative Pioneer programme is being used a bargaining chip to win a better deal from Brussels. So far European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen – who is soon to be parachuted into Nato – is playing hardball.

The PM is expected to make his decision on Horizon when the Commons is back in session next month. Meanwhile every day of postponement means grants and scientists being lost to Britain and the UK’s leading edge in life sciences being blunted.