The task-force is to be chaired jointly by the junior health minister Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and the chief executive of Astra Zeneca Dr Tom McKillop.
The aims of the task force will be to:
Announcing the task-force, Mr Milburn said: "We need to work together to keep Britain at the leading edge of international competitiveness." The task force would bring together Ministers from across government and industry leaders. Its terms of reference were wide (see Panel).
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Alan Milburn: task-force to report next year |
Mr Milburn had begun his address by saying that, for too long, health spending had been seen as a debit. But ill health was an expensive business. Sickness was a hidden tax on business. Good health was a precious commodity economically. That was why there were good economic reasons for investment in a national health service.
With the recently announced cash injections into the NHS, there was a real opportunity to transform the Service. Within five years, spending would increase by a half in cash terms and a third in real terms. But modernisation had to accompany the investment. Over the next few months the Government would be working closely with those in the NHS, and those outside, to construct a new national plan for the NHS. The objective would be to meet the five challenges for partnership, performance, professionals, patient care and prevention which the Prime Minister had set out for the modernisation of the NHS (PJ, April 1, p502).
He hoped the industry would play its part in helping to meet those challenges.
Mr Milburn said that there were three cardinal points that formed the foundation of the "special relationship" that the Government had with the industry. These were:
Issues to be addressedAmong the issues to be addressed by the task-force, according to the ABPI, are:
Other industry members of the task-force are Sir Richard Sykes (Glaxo Wellcome), Mr J.P. Garnier (Smithkline Beecham), Mr Bill Fullagar (Novartis), Mr Ken Moran (Pfizer) and Dr Trevor Jones (director general, Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry).
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The joint task-force on the industry was welcomed by the president of the ABPI when he addressed guests at the dinner. Mr Michael Bailey said: "It represents a significant step forward in terms of working together in the UK, and will address issues of fundamental concern to the retention and strengthening of the UK as an attractive environment for the pharmaceutical industry."
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New president
Mr Michael Bailey handed over the Presidency of the ABPI to Mr Bill Fullagar (above) of Novartis at the conclusion of the formal part of the proceedings of the dinner |
Referring to the recently concluded pharmaceutical price regulation scheme negotiations, Mr Bailey said that the agreement that was not only acceptable to both sides but it had established a positive framework for industry and government to move forward.
In many ways, the negotiations had been only a beginning. In recent weeks the ABPI, together with Department of Health officials, had agreed a joint project to look at the increasing competitiveness in the supply of medicines.
Mr Bailey declared: "We believe . . . that this increasing competitiveness will, in itself, ensure continuing value for the Health Service and act as a prelude to future deregulation - something I believe both industry and Government aspire to."
Perhaps a future president would be able to talk about the PPRS as an item of historical interest.
Referring to areas of concern to the industry, Mr Bailey complained about the "increasing challenge" of parallel trade. It cost the UK industry over £750m a year and undermined the ability of members to invest in their UK businesses. His members did not take issue with free movement, but the reality was that medicine prices were set and regulated by individual member states.
Mr Bailey also expressed concern about the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. A number of issues still had to be resolved about its processes and the data it demanded. One example was the approach of the institute to affordability and cost. The industry and the institute needed to reach a common understanding. However, he was sure that they could.
On the question of patients needing to play a greater role in decisions on their health care - something that the Department recognised through its Expert Patient initiative (PJ, April 1, p502) - Mr Bailey said that the industry needed greater ability to communicate with patients about their medicines.
The industry needed, he said, to ensure that patients had the knowledge and understanding to enable them to get the best from the treatments provided.
Lord Hunt, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health in the House of Lords, explains what he hopes the task-force will achieve
We have a distinguished history in this country of pioneering scientific and medical advances. The Government sees it as a priority to ensure that world class scientific advances continue to be made in the United Kingdom. In order to do this, we need to make sure that the conditions are right to allow our innovative industries to continue to innovate and compete.
For the National Health Service this means the pharmaceutical industry. This is an industry that is globalising fast and we need to make sure that Britain continues to attract and retain mobile investment in the future. The global industry's perception of the UK as a competitive base will be a key factor in the decisions it takes on where to invest and base its research operations in the future.
That is why we have created a new task-force to look at how we might improve the competitiveness of the UK-based industry. By that I do not mean just UK registered companies. I mean all of the research and development based pharmaceutical industry operating in the UK, whether British, European, or from elsewhere.
I will jointly be chairing the task-force with Dr Tom McKillop (chief executive, Astra Zeneca) and we will bring together Ministers from across Government working in partnership with senior industry figures.
Partnership is, of course easy to say but hard to do. We need to be clear about the terms of the relationship and what it is trying to do. We need to be clear about why we are trying to do it, too. A report will be published setting out the achievements of the task-force after consideration by the Prime Minister. That does not mean that we will be waiting until the end of the year before doing anything. We want to see real progress being made quickly.
The establishment of this group is a clear sign of the Government's determination to strengthen the competitiveness of the UK for the pharmaceutical industry. We need no less if we are to generate the kind of vibrant economy which provides the platform for a modern NHS and the scientific output to enable us to do that. The partnership has to extend to our policies for the NHS and on faster access to modern medicines.
The Secretary of State has made it clear that there should be no arbitrary cap on NHS expenditure on pharmaceuticals within the total resources available to the service. What counts is what works. If, as seems likely, better health can be brought by pharmaceutical advances that prove more beneficial and less invasive then spending on medicines can take a larger share of the total NHS budget. As a quid pro quo for increased access to the whole health budget a far more rigorous scrutiny is being carried out of what is clinically effective and cost-effective.
The new task-force will need to work within these parameters and will need to deliver on a better outcome for both partners - industry and Government. My job now is to make this work. There are a number of challenges ahead. We do not expect that we will see eye to eye with the industry on everything or that everything we suggest will be popular. But a modern NHS needs modern medicines which are cost-effective and efficient. That is what we will be working together to deliver. Ultimately, it must, and will, be the patient that benefits.