Big pharma has paused nearly £2bn in UK investments in 2025

Pharmaceutical companies have paused or cancelled nearly £2bn in planned UK investments this year, causing “suffering” to patients, as disputes over drug pricing escalate ahead of talks with Trump, The Guardian reports.

The life sciences sector crisis deepened after US drugmaker MSD said last Wednesday it would abandon its £1bn London research centre.

Two days later, AstraZeneca suspended a planned £200m expansion of its Cambridge facilities.

Together with AstraZeneca’s cancelled project in Liverpool and Eli Lilly’s shelved London lab, four projects worth more than £1.7bn have been halted this year.

Since 2022, decisions affecting 13 major projects or companies have damaged the UK pharma industry, including site closures and stock market exits.

Pharmaceutical firms argue the government invests too little in new medicines, leaving little incentive to develop and test drugs in a market they say does not reward innovation.

MPs on the science, innovation and technology committee will question MSD’s UK and Ireland managing director Ben Lucas on Tuesday.

He will appear alongside AstraZeneca UK president Tom Keith-Roach, Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry chief executive Richard Torbett and science minister Lord Vallance, a former GSK executive.

The voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth requires companies to return a share of their UK revenues to the NHS. The industry says the minimum clawback rate of 23.5 per cent for newer drugs is “unsustainable” and far higher than comparable European levels.

MSD, known as Merck in the US, said it would discontinue all research and development activities in the UK, meaning 125 scientists based at the Francis Crick Institute and the London BioScience Innovation Centre will lose their jobs.

Eli Lilly said its planned London Gateway Lab, part of a £279m investment, was on hold “as we are awaiting more clarity around the UK life sciences environment.”

AstraZeneca, Britain’s biggest drugmaker and co-developer of a Covid vaccine, scrapped a £450m expansion of its vaccine site in Speke, Liverpool, in February after failing to secure state support.

Sanofi’s UK head of market access Paul Naish said substantial investment is now on hold. “This is an intolerable situation for too many [patients] in this country and that is why government needs to work with the sector,” he said.

Swiss drugmaker Novartis is also delaying new UK manufacturing or research projects, it is understood.

Over the past 16 years, it has scaled back from seven sites and more than 4,000 staff to one London base employing 1,200 people.

Germany’s BioNTech confirmed its £1bn, 10-year partnership with the UK government to accelerate cancer drug trials remains on track.

Several hundred patients have already been treated with experimental immunotherapies, with new research centres planned in London and Cambridge.

US biotech Moderna, known for its Covid vaccine, opened a new manufacturing site in Harwell, Oxfordshire in May.