Continued investment into Life Sciences sector is a must for achieving government ambitions

As Minister for Investment, I am responsible for directing the world’s capital into our nation, whether through encouraging infrastructure investment in our roads and rail, helping fund new and growing businesses, or promoting innovative concepts such as sustainable energy research laboratories in Cambridge.?

This involves using my skillset, built off 27 years of building and managing businesses in a diverse range of industries, to drive investment into the UK and our key sectors. I have always been a marketeer and so putting together investment propositions and facilitating transactions through good client relationships has been my focus. I was honoured to have been offered this role, particularly as our country is at the apex of its talents and power in relative and absolute terms. We have everything going for us – a predictable legal system, a global financial centre, our language and culture and, above all, our people.

The area?of life sciences is?one of?the greatest examples. We invented or discovered many of the procedures and medicines we rely on today and the Covid vaccine story is well known.?

That’s why I was in California earlier this month at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.

I, along with Nusrat Ghani – the Minister for Industry and Investment Security at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – led a delegation of health leaders from the UK to both start new relationships and build on existing ones with global players across the Life Sciences sector. We wanted to ensure that the world knows the UK is 100% committed to supporting the growth of the sector and that we are willing to adapt and respond to its future needs.

We were also there to celebrate two recent and extraordinary investments from international firms into our Life Sciences sector; our separate agreements with Moderna and BioNTech SE ?to invest in mRNA research and development in the UK, which will create more than 150 jobs and boost research into vaccines for cancer and infectious diseases, represent a new and innovative way of working with industry to bring cutting-edge R&D into the UK. ?

Investments like these should give us a renewed sense of confidence that the world’s problems can be solved through real government agility, brilliant British scientists and international companies, who rightly see this country as the best source of their future growth.

To sit at a table with dedicated professionals and experts like Professor Lucy Chappell , the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department of Health and Social Care; Dr Samantha Roberts , the Chief Executive of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence; Dr Tim Ferris, National Director of Transformation at NHS England; Professor Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director for Cancer at NHS England and Baroness Nicola Blackwood , Minister for Technology, Innovation and Life Sciences and Chair of Genomics England?was genuinely eye opening. During discussions, I was also constantly reminded that the National Health Service is still one of the wonders of the modern world, with its unique and coherent collective of our health data and its fundamental desire to improve its service and give us better patient outcomes through innovation.

From Edward Jenner pioneering the world’s first smallpox vaccine over 200 years ago, to Dame Sarah Gilbert saving millions of lives by developing the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine; it’s clear to see we have an extraordinary history as a global Life Sciences superpower.

I am honoured to play a part in building on this success, meeting with firms like; Moderna , following the signing of our ten-year strategic partnership; CooperCompanies Companies, who make a staggering 2 billion contact lenses a year from their Southampton plant; and 默克 , who are working with a variety of our universities to train and develop new skills in our economy.

Each conversation centred around how keen businesses were to expand, develop and invest in the UK. This is unsurprising given the prizes on offer, which include:

• Access to skills and to keep this offer strong we need to ensure a steady stream of graduates enter the market every year and initiatives such as knowledge transfer partnerships, the Global Entrepreneur Programme and the Global Talent Network are huge advantages in this respect. I was also very reassured by the Prime Minister’s New Year address, in which he centred on the need to teach STEM subjects in ever greater quantities to meet this need. There is no doubt in my mind that it will only be through our developed human capital that we can confront the challenges of the future and grow our economy. While we may groan at the thought of ‘double maths’, in reality this agenda is the only one which can protect us and give us the security we need to keep pace with the modern world. Our brains are our primary defence.
• Collaboration with the NHS, which can act as an innovation partner to industry, combining deep clinical expertise, trial and deployment platforms at scale, with longitudinal data resources from a diverse population of more than 65 million people. With 1.4m patients treated every 24 hours, a huge amount of information is generated alongside the routine business of delivering care – no other healthcare system in the world offers this level of insight into our health and this brings unique opportunities to address some of our greatest healthcare challenges such as cancer, dementia and obesity. This is further supported by initiatives such as the recently-launched Our Future Health, the UK’s largest ever health research programme, which will build on the UK’s ability to create a detailed picture of our population’s health, including genetic data, enabling breakthrough research and intervention studies.
• Access to a global innovation hotspot – the UK offers a dynamic space for discovery and break-through science. With more than 80 Nobel Prizes for science-enabling biomedical applications, home to 2 of the top 3 global Life Sciences universities and a high global share of medical sciences research citations (13.2%), the UK is known for the most impactful research in the G7 (holding this #1 ranking since 2007).

While at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, I of course also clearly heard industry concerns and areas where we have more work to do. In my role as Minister for Investment I will be leveraging the resources of the Office for Investment and Department for Business and Trade and championing the sector across Government to ensure we continue to prioritise the creation of the right environment to achieve our Science Superpower ambitions.

In terms of ‘making a difference’, this trip was right at the top. The UK is open for business and has a globally unique offer to the Life Sciences sector. My focus will be on ensuring that we remain robustly competitive, developing our strengths and addressing those areas of concern. I foresee a golden age for investment into our economy and with innovative sectors such as Life Sciences, I harbour a deep sense of excitement at what we can achieve to give us longer, healthier and happier lives.