Up to £70m will have to be diverted from developing new cancer drugs in order to prepare for the impact of Brexit, Britain’s biggest maker pharmaceuticals of has warned.
In a stark intervention over the extra costs being incurred, Phil Thomson, president of global affairs at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), made clear that something approaching the figure would have to be spent whatever the outcome of trade talks.
In evidence to the Commons health select committee, he said he would rather be spending the money on the company’s efforts to find new, life-saving cancer treatments.
He said the company estimated that 1,700 of its products would be directly affected by a chaotic Brexit, with new regulation processes, labs and approval systems costing “somewhere between £60m and £70m”.
“Even if we have a smooth and orderly Brexit process, and we work through with a new [free trade agreement] or a new arrangement, there are going to be costs of that magnitude anyway, but they will probably be more phased,” Thomson told the committee.
“We will probably be able to reallocate some of those costs elsewhere. It may not be as significant as the contingency plan, but the reality is that we are already going to have to spend some of that.
“All I would say to you is that we are going to do everything we can to minimise disruption.
“Obviously, that money could though, be being put behind clinical trials, and I can tell you right now that we have a cancer portfolio we are trying to invest in, into which that money should be going, to develop the next generation of cancer medicines.
“That is something – I will be honest with you – that we are wrestling with internally inside GSK.”
He added that under some scenarios, products that have been approved in the UK would need to be re-authorised for Europe. “Of the products affected, the impact of the testing changes and the reregistration is about 13,000 packs that will have to be updated as a result of what we need to do,” he said.
Some money was already being spent, he said. “The timeline to implement the laboratories, at a minimum, takes 18 months – so, we are already having to initiate cost as a result of this.”
Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative chair of the health select committee, said it was her personal view that the UK should try to stay inside the European Medicines Agency, to ensure current regulation remained as simple as possible.
The Liberal Democrats said they had uncovered figures suggesting the cost of importing medicines had already jumped by £5m since the Brexit vote. Freedom of information data from 32 NHS trusts found they had spent an extra £1.2m due to the fall in the pound since the referendum – the equivalent of an extra £5m across all 135 NHS trusts.
GSK has already announced it is preparing to build new drug testing facilities in Europe as part of contingency plans. The pharmaceutical industry as a whole has been warning about the impact on patients as a result of a chaotic Brexit.
Sheuli Porkess, from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said: “The way each company is approaching Brexit depends on their own individual circumstances, but we’ve already seen a number of companies make decisions about their future business.
“These decisions are being taken – at a cost – to replicate important safety and quality assurance processes for medicines in the UK and the EU, and take time to implement.
“The sheer scale and complexity of safely ensuring 45m packs of medicine make their way from the UK to Europe each month – and over 37m packs coming the other way – requires processes to be in place well before March 2019.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: “Our absolute priority is the safety of patients and we are doing everything we can to make sure they continue to have access to the best and most innovative medicines, and that their safety is protected by the strongest regulatory framework.”