Fixing NHS needs greater investment in medicines, says ABPI

As the Health Secretary kicks off a national conversation to shape the government’s 10 plan to overhaul the NHS, the ABPI points to the vital role medicines and vaccines can play.

The government is seeking to transform the NHS by shifting from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. To inform these plans, it has launched a national conversation about the future of the NHS.

Richard Torbett, Chief Executive of the ABPI, said: “Wes Streeting is spot-on in identifying three strategic shifts necessary to fix the broken NHS. Medicines and vaccines have a vital role in all three of these priorities, but we are not currently realising their potential. Declining investment in new medicines is part of the 'broken NHS', and if we're serious about fixing it, we need to reverse that trend.

“A decade of declining investment has left us with patchy adoption and real tensions on price due to the UK being so far out of line with most of the developed world. The pharmaceutical industry has a strong tradition in the UK of partnering with the government to try and grow the sector whilst also managing cost, but we now need to be much more ambitious.”

Providing better access to medicine leads to better health outcomes for UK patients, improves workplace productivity and reduces the economic burden of ill health. Yet, in a decade when healthcare spending increased by 18%, spending on branded medicines fell 14% in real terms. [1]

UK medicines spending is now the lowest among our peers, accounting for just 9% of the UK’s healthcare spend compared to countries like Italy (17%), Germany (17%) and France (15%). [2]

For every £100 in GDP, the UK spends 81p on pharmaceuticals. This compares to £1.94 spent by Germany and £1.84 spent by Japan. [3]

Currently UK treatable and avoidable mortality is the second worst in the G7 after the US, with UK mortality from treatable causes at a rate of 69 per 100,000. This is around 50% more than Japan, France and Canada. [4]

The Tony Blair Institute estimated that a 20% reduction in the incidence of six major disease categories which keep people out of work – cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), chronic respiratory illness, diabetes and mental-health and musculoskeletal disorders – could boost GDP by around 0.74 per cent within five years, with increased tax revenues of £13.0 billion by 2030, and reduced benefit payments of £10.2 billion by 2035. [5]



Notes to Editors
[1] ABPI, Leading global pharma firms exit UK drug pricing agreement, January 203
[2] ABPI & PWC, ‘Transforming lives, raising productivity: Is the UK missing out on the full potential of innovative medicines?’, May 2022
[3] The King Fund, How does the NHS compare to the health care systems of other countries? June 2023
[4] OECD, Avoidable Mortality (preventable and treatable), November 2023
[5] The Tony Blair Institute, ‘Prosperity Through Health: The Macroeconomic Case for Investing in Preventative Health Care in the UK’, July 2024