Wes Streeting gets top marks for fighting talk in his battle with the pharmaceutical companies over the price of prescription medicines. After the health secretary walked away from talks with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) on Friday, he stuck the boot in. The “shortsighted” pharma industry had rejected “a serious and generous” offer, he said. It should be more “collaborative” instead of making “unaffordable” demands. The government could not allow British patients and taxpayers to be ripped off.
Yet Streeting surely also knows this standoff cannot be allowed to last indefinitely. Portraying the pharma companies as greedy may be good political theatre – and, since we are talking about some of the world’s biggest and richest corporations, the sentiment is hardly controversial. But at the end of this process the government still needs a deal. If not, its boasts about making the UK a life sciences “superpower” will ring hollow. And the cold reality, unfortunately, is that Streeting is negotiating with global companies that also have reasons to play hard.
