Life Sciences

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am pleased that the noble Lord mentioned that part of our initiative. As he rightly said, we have undertaken to develop a strategic road map that will set out the timeframe and actions required to establish a world-leading synthetic biology sector. That will be published in spring 2012. To oversee the delivery of the road map, we will establish a synthetic biology leadership council, co-chaired by my ministerial colleague David Willetts, the Minister for Science and Innovation, and Dr Clarke of Shell Global Solutions. I am told that the total timeline for this is 12 months. We therefore intend to move forward on this with some speed. I share the noble Lord’s enthusiasm for its potential.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords—

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords—

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we have not yet heard from a Conservative speaker.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend on having omitted a reference in his Statement to a valley of death fund. Secondly, having picked up the reference to big pharma in this welcome Statement, I called to mind the historic and dramatic decision of the late Austin Bide of Glaxo to increase the planning horizon for research in that company from five years to 25 years. The Statement makes clear the acceleration that we shall see in drug development. Can my noble friend hazard any estimate of what effect today’s announcement will have on the planning horizon of research, in the manner of the late Mr Bide’s remarkable extension?

[Earl Howe]

The planning horizon for research, as my noble friend will know, has always been a long one. With the increasing cost of research, particularly in later stage clinical trials, companies end up making an extremely significant investment in order to bring one molecule to the market. What we seek to achieve for big pharma in this package of measures is a sense that we in the UK have, as it were, an unrivalled ecosystem that brings together business, researchers, clinicians and patients to translate discovery into clinical use for medical innovation within the NHS. What we want them to appreciate is that the UK provides an environment and infrastructure that supports pioneering researchers and clinicians to bring innovation to the market earlier and more easily so that this country becomes the location of choice for investment. I am thinking here particularly of our proposals for setting up academic health science networks that will span the NHS. That is our ambition. I am thinking of the early access scheme for medicines, which was mentioned in the Statement. We want to break down the regulatory barriers to speeding up clinical trials that have beset the industry. For all those reasons, I should like the industry to see this as facilitating a shorter time horizon. However, we cannot do anything to get around the essential safety and quality standards that the patient and the citizen rightly insist upon.