The government is ready to give big pharma a pay rise, but not doctors

They may feel even angrier if they compare Starmer’s statements on the strikes with his government’s softball approach to recently concluded negotiations with the pharmaceutical industry.

In the last few months, the pharmaceutical industry has been at war with the government over medicine prices, with industry lobbyists demanding the UK water down pricing mechanisms that help to control NHS spending. Donald Trump has also weighed in, threatening tariffs on UK medicines exports to the US if we don’t spend more on medicines.

Currently, the state can claw back some revenues from firms if the drug bill rises rapidly. But big pharma companies have pushed to significantly water down that rebate scheme - and effectively lift the cap off spending. Even more shocking was the demand that the NHS increase the threshold at which it considers new medicines good value-for-money by 25 per cent. To be clear, this is not about buying more medicines, but simply about the NHS agreeing to worse value for money.

If ever a set of demands sounded like a fantasy (and a dark one at that), it was this from the pharma industry. While Trump’s tariff threats make the situation more difficult today, just this September, Downing Street said the NHS will “never be on the table” in a trade deal with the US.

Yet, just days after Wes Streeting called doctors “moaning minnies” for seeking terms to help sustain the NHS workforce, the government was in fact settling a deal with the US trade department that will see big pharma companies paid as much as £3 billion extra a year for NHS medicines. Instead of standing up to these corporate giants, our government is set to hand over billions more in public money.

Make no mistake, this is a bad deal for the NHS and for public finances. The stats are clear that the NHS already gets much better value for money from its existing [1] services than it does when paying top rates for medicines.

And these firms already charge the NHS massive mark-ups on medicines and make monster profits globally. The settlement with big pharma companies beats all budget estimates for doctors’ pay restoration.

It’s hard not to see the government applying a worrying double standard, where corporate greed and Trump’s bullying are appeased, while NHS staff are patronised for making reasonable demands.

While our government criticises doctors for describing strikes as “reckless”, it ignores the huge health impacts of its pharma deal. Analysis by Professor of Health Economics Karl Claxton has estimated that paying for higher drug prices by diverting £3 billion from other parts of the NHS would result in 15,000 additional deaths every year. To be clear, we are talking about thousands of lives lost to meet pharmaceutical companies’ demand for profit.

Worse might be still to come. Just days after this inflation-busting deal was signed, the head of UK pharma lobbying group ABPI labelled this dodgy deal “only the first step” in making the UK a more “competitive” place to do business. To get a sense of what might be coming next, one industry boss said this summer that he wanted the UK to double its spending on new medicines.

The government has shown astonishing double standards by giving in quickly to big pharma’s demands, while taking a hardball approach to negotiations with resident doctors. But prioritising corporate interests over health workers isn’t just bad for resident doctors - it looks set to be a disaster for the NHS and all our health.

If the government wants to show it cares about our nation’s health, investing in the staff that help keep the NHS running looks a better bet than bulking up the profit margins of corporate giants.

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Tim Bierley is Campaigns and Policy Manager at Global Justice Now.

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