Labour Caves in to Pressure from Trump on Drug Prices
4th December, 2025
For months Trump has been demanding price increases for drugs sold to the National Health Service in order to get lower priced drugs for Americans and the approach has been anything but subtle. Threatened tariffs on imports from Britain to the USA will be paid for by the American people, not the exporter. The American Ambassador to Britain in a speech in Northern Ireland recently said if the UK did not increase drug prices, the US were prepared to move American pharmaceutical companies out of Ireland and Britain.
This is purely and simply political blackmail.
This deal is bad for the NHS and those who rely on it for treatment. Under this new deal the UK will increase the price threshold for 'innovative', and thus expensive, drugs by 25%.
The UK will also increase the overall amount the NHS spends on medicines with a target to increase that spending from 0.3% to 0.6 of GDP over the next ten years not to provide better drug treatment for patients but to please the Trump Administration, which, in response, have only agreed not to put tariffs on drugs that are exported from Britain for three years.
The Nuffield Trust think tank has said that this agreement could lead to an extra £3 billion being spend on drugs, in the NHS, which is “bad news” given how stretched budgets were.