Merck Research Site

Lord Johnson of Lainston Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I have indeed tried to continue the brilliant work of the noble Lord on bringing together parts of government in this area; I met people from many different departments about this as recently as yesterday. We are joining up the life sciences sector right the way across government. On the point about blue-sky thinking, that is exactly one of the things we have done with industry leaders. We said, “Could you think about the most imaginative way to come up with answers to some of these?” We got a piece of work on that, and we will continue working with them. There are indeed people from the NHS working in industry and people from industry working here, and of course I have quite an extensive background of understanding the pharmaceutical sector.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

Would the Minister follow up my noble friend’s comment—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

Sorry, my Lords, but the noble Lord was not present at the start of this debate.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I am sorry, but I was actually in the doorway, coming in. I would be grateful if I could ask the question, if that is possible. My noble friend Lord Markham raised an important point about the Treasury’s view of how these pricing processes function. The reality is that if we do not have the drug companies in this country, we are not just going to miss the opportunity for investment, we will lose the opportunity for clinical trials for our patients and individuals in the NHS to get access to these new medicines. I return to the question about an assessment of the overall cost of these measures and a proper assessment of the understanding of how investment from the biopharma sector in the UK actually adds up, not just in relation to the pounds, shillings and pence of the medicines.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I agree that this is a key area, and it is one that I am working on. I have worked on it with macroeconomists because it is something that we need to look at. We care about the industry in this country. We have two of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies based here and our largest company is a pharmaceutical company. Those companies are essential. They train most of the people who end up working in SMEs and start-ups, and they are the reason why we have such a flourishing life sciences sector here. We need to look at the expenditure, not just from a narrow health economics perspective but from a broader economic perspective.