Green shoots for UK pharma investment, but delivery will decide whether they take root

The ABPI’s 2026 flagship Competitiveness Report finds the UK has begun to reverse years of decline. Sustained delivery of government commitments will now determine whether the recovery holds.

Since September 2025, the global pharmaceutical industry has committed an additional £2 billion of investment into the UK, spanning the value chain from AI-enabled discovery science to large-scale medicines manufacturing.

These investments have been made possible through collaboration between industry and government, alongside a combination of short- and long-term policy commitments, including an increase to the baseline cost-benefit threshold used by NICE and a commitment to increase UK investment in innovative medicines to 0.6% of GDP. Taken together, these measures have begun to rebuild the UK's appeal to global pharmaceutical investors.

In 'UK pharmaceutical investment competitiveness report 2026: Green shoots, global competition, and the case for delivery', the ABPI set out the UK's attractiveness as a destination for global pharmaceutical investment against 12 leading markets, using more than 40 international metrics [1].

The report found that the UK has retained its core competitive strengths, but several are at risk of erosion.

The UK's science base, domestic talent, and intellectual property policy framework remain globally competitive. Yet these structural capabilities take years to rebuild once lost, and international competitors are closing the gap.

The UK has fallen behind in the quality of its research output as China extends its lead, and the proportion of UK students graduating in the natural sciences, mathematics, and statistics has declined.

However, the UK is making progress on the weaknesses that were deterring investment. Government commitments have begun to address the UK's narrow access to, slow adoption of, and underinvestment in, innovative medicines, as well as high clawback rates on company revenues.

The UK has an opportunity to build new competitive advantages. Recent investments in the UK's health data, clinical trials, and regulatory offers create an opportunity to move from the middle of the pack to global leadership.

Marketing authorisation times at the MHRA have improved, nearly all clinical trial applications are now assessed within 60 days, and the £600 million Health Data Research Service has the potential to give the UK a genuine unique selling point.

The prize is significant. The pharmaceutical industry already supports more than 125,000 jobs across every UK nation and region. If investment and growth accelerate, it could create as many as 81,300 new jobs by 2035, expanding the pharmaceutical workforce to around 200,000 people and generating £33.4 billion of direct Gross Value Added each year, up from £20.4 billion today.

Richard Torbett, ABPI Chief Executive, said: "A year ago, the UK was losing ground in the global race for pharmaceutical investment. Today, the picture is more hopeful. Through a real partnership between government and industry, we have started to turn a trend of disinvestment into one of green shoots, with £2 billion of new investment committed over the past year alone. But this recovery is not yet secure.

“Investors make decisions that play out over decades, and they are watching closely to see whether the UK delivers on the commitments it has made. The task now is to provide and proceed along a clear, reliable roadmap to delivery so companies can invest with confidence. Get this right, and the UK can unlock tens of thousands of high-value jobs, billions of pounds of growth, and faster access to new medicines for NHS patients.”

UK competitive strengths

• Science base: The UK ranks in the top three for seven of nine metrics in this area, more than any other. It has 16 of the world's top 100 universities for life sciences, the largest government health R&D budget in Europe and ranks first in Europe for the number of biotechs and venture capital raised. While its science base is still the UK's strongest asset, competitors are closing the gap. The UK slipped to third in the Nature Index as China extended its lead, and its share of the world's most-cited medical publications fell to 1.8 per cent in 2024.

• Intellectual property. The UK maintains ten years of Regulatory Data Protection and five-year Supplementary Protection Certificates, while the EU moves to reduce its own protections. The UK-Switzerland free trade agreement contains world-leading intellectual property (IP) provisions. The UK's relative advantage is growing as the EU shortens its own data protection by a year, but reliability is the emerging risk: recent UK court rulings on the 'doctrine of plausibility' have diverged from European courts and revoked patents upheld elsewhere.

• Domestic talent. The UK continues to have a relatively high proportion (7.97%) of students graduating in natural sciences, mathematics and statistics, just 0.5 percentage points behind France. However, while performance remains strong, it has declined from 9.22% in 2020. The recent closure of undergraduate chemistry courses in 11 universities points to a thinning of the UK's talent pipeline. Conversely, the United States has expanded its graduate output due to strong economic growth in STEM sectors like the pharmaceutical industry.

UK competitive weaknesses

• Medicines availability and adoption. Just 33 per cent of new medicines were made fully available for their licensed use in 2021–24, and the UK ranks last among European comparators for how adoption of new, innovative medicines. The direction of travel is more positive, however: raising the NICE cost-effectiveness threshold to £25,000–35,000 per QALY, the first increase since the early 2000s, has already enabled nine additional medicines to be approved, with implementation now the test [2].

• Clawback rates. Despite a new 15 per cent cap on branded medicines sales clawback rates, the UK's rate on newer medicines remains higher than every other comparator country in the analysis, several of which operate no clawback system at all. The trend is now downwards, however: the newer medicines rate has fallen to 14.5 per cent in 2026 from a 2025 peak of 22.9 per cent, and agreeing a stable, internationally competitive scheme model from 2029 is the next milestone.

• Underinvestment in medicines. The UK still sits below every comparator country for spending on innovative medicines, a long-term driver of the negative investor sentiment that peaked in recent years. That is now set to change: the government has committed to double investment to at least 0.6 per cent of GDP and set interim milestones – delivery would return the UK to a globally competitive position.

• Access to global talent. A Skilled Worker visa now costs more than £12,000 per person, far above competitor countries, and settlement timelines for global talent and their dependents risk being decoupled by up to seven years. Costs are still rising, though expanding the Global Talent visa to a pilot of R&D-intensive businesses is a positive first step against a widening gap with competitors.

UK areas of unrealised potential

• Regulation. The MHRA's median time to approve a new medicine fell from 427 days in 2024 to 378 days in 2025, alongside improvements in the reliability of scientific advice and clinical trial approvals. That leaves the UK fourth of six agencies analysed, narrowly behind Canada, so holding this trajectory – including closer MHRA and NICE alignment – is what would turn improvement into a genuine competitive edge.

• Clinical trials. Study set-up has improved, with 98 per cent of trials receiving regulatory approval within 60 days, though patient recruitment continues to decline and requires attention across the whole trial journey. The gap has moved later in the process: only 58 per cent of industry trials opened to recruitment within 60 days of approval and recruitment fell by 25 per cent between 2022/23 and 2024/25, while the new network of 35 research delivery centres is outperforming the wider health system.

• Health data. The Health Data Research Service, backed by £600 million from government and Wellcome, could transform the UK's fragmented health data assets into a coherent national service and a major draw for investment. A leadership team and strategic vision are now in place, so delivery will test whether this becomes the UK's unique selling point.

• Tax and investment incentives. The UK can now deploy up to £570 million of capital grants over five years, a major success of the Sector Plan, though competitors including Ireland and Japan are improving their own R&D incentives. Holding current rates is welcome but, may not be enough to keep pace: Ireland raised its R&D tax credit from 30 to 35 per cent in January 2026 and Japan introduced a 40 per cent credit for strategic technologies, including pharmaceuticals, in March. This compares to the UK’s current 20% rate of R&D tax relief.