THERE could be more than 200,000 avoidable deaths in England with billions diverted from essential services to pay for new medicines to complete the terms of the UK-US trade deal, new analysis has found.
The NHS in England will have to divert £45 billion from essential services to help pay for new medicines under the terms of the deal agreed between the UK Government and Donald Trump’s US administration last December.
Ministers have been accused of caving in to US demands to spend billions of pounds a year extra on drugs supplied to the NHS following pressure from the US president.
According to the British Medical Journal, £45bn will be diverted from health services by 2036 to pay for 25% more new medicines under the trade deal, which will have an adverse effect on the nation’s public health.
Analysis of the funding cuts found it could cause around 229,000 in excess deaths by 2036.
The estimated avoidable death toll would be larger than the number that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic, with 137,000 patients losing their lives between March 2020 and June 2022.
The report showed that most of the preventable deaths would be among people with heart, respiratory and gastrointestinal disease or cancer, as first reported by The Guardian.
Ciarán Devane, the chief executive of the NHS Alliance, which represents the healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, hit out at the UK Government following the finding, saying they raise “serious questions” over whether the trade deal represented value for patients or for the NHS.
“If billions of pounds are diverted away from frontline care to meet higher medicines costs, the consequences for prevention, community services and the treatment of long-term conditions could be profound,” he said.
“The government must urgently publish the full impact assessment and ensure there is appropriate scrutiny of the deal if it could have such far-reaching implications for population health.”
Ministers previously argued that the deal was good because it would let British-made drugs sold to the US avoid tariffs of up to 100% after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on some medicines being imported into the US.
The Green’s leader in England and Wales, Zack Polanski, said the findings should indicate the end of the “special relationship” between the UK and the US.
He said: “The Labour Government's craven attempt to suck up to Trump has devastating consequences.
“The UK has agreed to pay 25% more for new medicines - and thousands of lives could be lost as a result.
“End the so-called 'special relationship' and build bridges with our allies.”
The UK Government said the trade deal would cost an extra £1bn between 2025-26 and 2028-29.
However, it admitted that costs will rise after 2028-29, but has not given any estimates of the rise.
Tim Bierley, a campaigner at Global Justice Now, said: “Billions that could be spent on recruiting more NHS staff, cutting GP waiting times, or improving our hospital care are set to be siphoned off by corporate giants in the pharma industry. As the research shows, if money is diverted from other critical parts of our NHS to pay for this deal, this would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
“Scandalously, this backroom deal was not subject to any scrutiny in parliament before being rushed through – and the government refuses to say what impact it will have on the NHS. The next prime minister must change direction, stand up for our NHS, and unpick the mess left by their predecessors.”
Diarmaid McDonald, the executive director of the patient campaign group Just Treatment, said: “These numbers should shock people to their core. Tens of billions of pounds taken out of the NHS budget and put into the back pockets of the pharmaceutical industry, placing hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.
“Across the country, our parents, our grandparents, our loved ones, dying unnecessarily in order to inflate drug company profits and please Donald Trump. This is a national scandal.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Through our partnership with the US, we have reformed medicine pricing, allowing NHS patients to access life-changing new medicines they previously would have been denied. We are also making the UK one of the best places in the world to develop, launch and manufacture new medicines.
“The £45bn figure is not recognised by the department. The deal will be funded by allocations made at the spending review, where record funding for the NHS was secured. Future funding will be settled at the next spending review.”
