A sign of the times
The UK last month was firmly in the grip of a fever: election fever. Any newsworthy issue - from violent crime to hospital waiting lists, from house prices to controlling MRSA - was immediately seized upon by the major political parties with the aggression of a pack of stray dogs trying to claim ownership of an old bone they found in the gutter.
The collapse of one of the UK's major manufacturing companies - MG Rover - at the start of the election campaign added more than a little spice to what might otherwise have been a rather bland and predictable event. In a reversal of the usual position, the failing company had been pinning its hopes of survival on a UK Government-subsidised deal with a Chinese enterprise - in marked contrast to the number of UK companies seeking to set up manufacturing in China to benefit from the cheap labour and skilled workforce available there.
Anyone who has been to a major fine chemicals trade show in the past couple of years and has seen the rapid expansion in the number of Asian exhibitors can be in no doubt that the global dynamics of the pharmaceutical industry are changing, and changing rapidly. And with another crop of poor clinical trial outcomes and safety concerns affecting a number of actual and potential blockbuster drugs, there must be many large pharmaceutical manufacturers who are seriously considering moving their production facilities further east.
Concurrent with, but attracting less attention than, MG Rover's dramatic demise was a warning by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) that key areas that indicate the health of the UK-based pharmaceutical industry have moved downward. Less was spent by the industry on r&d on new medicines, the industry's trade balance dipped and less was invested in capital expenditure. Furthermore, the National Health Service spend on branded, innovative medicines has fallen by 4.3%.
Among the factors contributing to the dip in the key figures, according to ABPI president Vincent Lawton, were the continuing problem of parallel imports; the costliness and bureaucracy surrounding clinical trial work in the UK compared with many countries abroad; an increasing shortage of quality science graduates in the UK; rivalry from Eastern European countries for pharmaceutical r&d, and tax incentives in countries such as Singapore and China; and continuing poor take-up of new medicines in the UK.
The global market is becoming increasingly competitive and it is only to be expected that commercial organisations will go where the climate is most favourable in terms of investment, profitability and skills availability.
Past glory is, unfortunately, no guarantee of future success.