Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Earl Howe on 17 November (HL2576), whether small companies were represented in the negotiations over the new Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme at the final stages when the number of negotiators were reduced to two; and if small company representatives were removed from the final negotiations, how the interests of such companies were maintained.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry represented the interests of the whole United Kingdom pharmaceutical industry, including smaller companies, for the purposes of negotiating the 2014 Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS).

The 2014 PPRS includes a number of provisions relating to smaller businesses. For example, companies with sales of health service medicines of less than £5 million a year (not counting global sales) are exempt from making any payments under the 2014 PPRS.