The outgoing chief executive of the pharmaceutical company GSK says the NHS should pay more for its drugs, in order to create “the right commercial environment” and ensure “patient access to innovation” (UK must reform drug pricing to become life sciences superpower, says GSK boss, 29 October).

Our research shows that UK taxpayers are already paying handsomely for “patient access to innovation” through the £3.4bn in tax relief on profits of patented drugs that the UK has granted GSK via the UK’s “patent box” tax regime. This includes £486m in 2024 alone – larger than the entire budget of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the UK’s main bioscience innovation funder.

HMRC even granted UK tax relief to GSK on profits of a lupus drug, which for several years was unavailable to UK lupus sufferers, due to the price that GSK demanded from the NHS (£769.50 per dose).

With NHS budgets squeezed and tax rises on the horizon, it’s high time the government demanded more from drug companies in return for their “innovation” tax breaks – and high time that companies like GSK were honest about the extraordinary largesse they already receive from the UK tax system.
Mike Lewis
Director, TaxWatch