4th November 2025
Why Pharma is Withdrawing from the UK — and How We Can Fix It
By Eugene McDaid, Founder, KEMIO Consulting
Pharma isn’t leaving the UK because the science has failed — it’s leaving because the system has.
The UK still produces world-class scientists, data talent, and translational innovators. From AI-led drug discovery to advanced cell and gene therapy, we remain an idea factory for global biotech. The problem is that while we’re rich in talent, we’re poor in investment confidence.
Over the past five years, many of the world’s biggest drug makers — from AstraZeneca to Eli Lilly — have quietly scaled back or relocated R&D projects, manufacturing, and commercial teams abroad. The reasons are clear: slow reimbursement decisions, unpredictable regulatory timelines, and a commercial environment that prizes cheap medicines over long-term innovation.
As one industry executive put it: “We can discover a breakthrough drug in Oxford, but it’s often first launched in Boston or Basel.”
Cheap Medicine vs. Innovation
The UK’s approach to pricing and market access is well-intentioned — to protect the NHS and ensure affordability — but the balance has tipped too far. When reimbursement levels are consistently lower than our European peers, global boards conclude that the UK is a great place for early science but a poor place for business.
The truth is simple: you can’t have the cheapest drugs in the world and expect to be the global hub for discovering them.
Innovation is capital-intensive. If companies can’t recoup investments, they’ll deploy their capital elsewhere. We’re seeing this now — venture funding for UK biotech has fallen by over 40% since 2021, while US and Swiss clusters continue to thrive.
A Nation of Talent, Not Capital
Walk through London’s Knowledge Quarter or Cambridge Biomedical Campus and you’ll find exceptional people working on generative AI for drug design, computational biology, and multi-omics analytics. What’s missing is the scale of investment that turns ideas into impact.
We need to move beyond rhetoric. The UK’s life-sciences sector requires long-term fiscal incentives, predictable reimbursement frameworks, and public-private partnerships that reward innovation, not just cost-containment.
Talent alone won’t keep pharma here — investment will.
Making the UK Attractive Again
The fix isn’t complicated:
The UK can lead again — not by being the cheapest, but by being the most innovative, collaborative, and investment-ready market for global pharma. There is a huge opportunity for global Pharma to access some of the best talent in the industry if they are just willing to invest.
