18 May Let them eat cake: can France steal the UK’s life science crown?
This week President Macron launched Innovation Santé 2030 , Roudie Shafie, Partner at OVID Health, assesses how France really measures up to the UK when it comes to the life sciences eco-system.
President Macron’s recent announcement was the culmination of the last couple of years of design to define how the life sciences sector will deliver on President Macron’s economic strategy. Along the way, there were health tech and biotech drinks receptions at the French Embassy in London, French ministers opposing the UK’s full participation in the Horizon programme, and the now infamous berating by Macron of the CEO of a French pharmaceutical giant for failing to place in the race for COVID-19 vaccines.
The programme announced this week is taken almost entirely from a UK blueprint of the last 3 life science strategies: clusters, biomedical research centres, academic health science centres and healthcare missions. It’s good to see that the time spent by those of us sharing UK best practice with the French teams was well received. But can France really eat the UK’s life science cake? Well, it’s complicated.
Firstly, France and the UK already share the European slice of the global cake. While the UK government spends more on health research & development (R&D), France is committing to spend more and has better access to Horizon funding. Both countries are on a par when it comes to clinical trials but the UK trend is downward while France is up. The UK also continues to have lower uptake of new medicines than France – in therapies like CAR-T France has easily overtaken the UK’s early lead – and scores worse than France on both health infrastructure, and the quality and size of the healthcare market (data source: Life science competitiveness indicators 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)). But fundamentally, both countries are well behind the USA and Japan on R&D spend, which in part explains why the fastest growing pharmaceutical companies are coming from the US or Japan.
Then, there is the wider business environment. In the last World Bank “ease of doing business” index, the UK was proudly 8th while France languished at number 33. Reforms in France and Brexit in the UK mean that those numbers are likely to converge. The big difference is going to be France’s boldness in business incentives; their relentless trend towards increasing R&D tax credits significantly over the last decade is paying off. The UK on the other hand is reluctant to deliver reform. A recent positive change to the UK R&D tax credit scheme was hard fought by the biotech industry and difficult to secure. As one senior civil servant told me after I set out the risks of manufacturing moving from the UK to Ireland, tax breaks for inward investment are not very “British”.
Both countries have a long history of producing high-quality, globally-recognised research and continue to do so. France has a stronger pharmaceutical manufacturing base, but the UK has one of the most skilled workforces in the world. Importantly, whereas Macron has set out his blueprint with passion and financial backing, an implementation plan for the UK Life Science Vision has failed to materialise. Pharmaceutical companies in the UK are also being hit with rebate “taxes” on sales of over 26% and the UK’s global edge in the talent market is being eroded by a post-Brexit immigration framework hijacked for political point scoring.
Finally, as we policy experts often tell our clients and government stakeholders, you can’t underestimate stability and sentiment. While the UK offered instability from Brexit to Liz Truss, France, while facing some of the same political challenges (a pandemic, populists pressure, economic stresses), did their homework and set out a credible plan for life sciences. Not too flashy, replicating a classic “clusters” and “public-private” blueprint, but nonetheless a plan with funding received by industry with positive sentiment.
The big risk for France as it tries to overtake the UK as a life science leader is the EU’s forthcoming pharmaceutical legislation. This has the potential to do major damage to France’s appeal compared to the UK when it comes to regulation and market access. It can also set the UK apart, if it chooses, as a more nimble and pro-business partner to the industry.
If you want to hear more from OVID on life science global policy get in touch at [email protected]