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BIA responds to Spring Budget 2024: highlights for UK life sciences
Steve Bates OBE, CEO of the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA), said:
“Three highlights from the Budget for UK life sciences: first, the new expert advisory panel for the HMRC is a smart way to maximise the efficiency of R&D tax relief support for life science innovators. Secondly, Alan Marchington’s ICG winning the LIFTs scheme shows real movement to unlock pension funds for life sciences, and, thirdly, AstraZeneca’s investment in next generation manufacturing in Speke and Cambridge shows the strength of our ecosystem.
“I’m delighted that the UK Government continues to recognise start-ups and scale-ups are forging the innovative products and technologies underpinning the UK’s economic future and improving all of our lives in the process. Today’s Spring Budget delivers welcome progress on increasing private investment into these companies and improving the tax regime to support innovation.
“It is fantastic to see the deep life science investment expertise of Allan Marchington and his team at Intermediate Capital Group partnered with the largest pensions provider in the UK, Phoenix Group, for the first time. This partnership, facilitated by the Chancellor and British Business Bank, marks a new era for the UK life sciences financing ecosystem. The investment of capital from pension funds into innovative British companies will help deliver the real-terms financial returns savers so desperately need while delivering the new medicines and technologies society so desperately needs. This is a win-win situation for everybody.
“Successive policy changes to the R&D tax regime over the past several years have created uncertainty and additional red tape for SMEs, putting at risk the UK’s reputation as a location for innovative businesses. We are therefore looking forward to a period of stability and bedding-in for the new rules legislated for in the Finance Bill. However, with British companies being at the cutting edge of global R&D, HMRC will need help to ensure the R&D tax relief claims process is streamlined and robust, making it straightforward and quick for genuine innovative companies and catching fraudulent ones. The new HMRC-industry panel is a smart way to deliver industry expertise and feedback into the HMRC’s vital work to make the UK business environment as innovation-friendly as possible.”
Media enquiries
For more information, contact Alina O’Keeffe, Associate Director, Marketing and Communications, BIA on [email protected]
About the BioIndustry Association (BIA)