Influencing and shaping our sector | BIA update: July - October 2022

The BioIndustry Association (BIA) continues to represent our members’ voices at the highest levels through our policy and influencing work. This quarterly update gives an overview of key policy developments and BIA’s continued involvement with policymakers, regulatory authorities and wider stakeholders on behalf of the UK life sciences sector, from July to October 2022.

The summer break usually means less politics-watching for the BIA team, but the change in Government kept us on our toes this year. We saw Boris Johnson leave Number 10 and Liz Truss take over as the new Conservative Party leader and form a new Government. This resulted in an intense few days of networking with newly appointed Ministers at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, topped off by our own successful fringe event on growing innovative manufacturing through apprenticeships. We launched our Women in Biotech pilot mentoring programme to support and inspire women in our sector, published our Genomics Nation 2022 report, and our Expert Advisory Group, which has advised and guided the Government’s Vaccine Taskforce (VTF) since 2020, met for the last time following the formal winding-down of the VTF.

BIA has continued to represent members’ and the sectors’ interests in numerous government consultations, workshops, and meetings. We continued to work with the Office for Life Sciences to keep up momentum of the Life Sciences Scale-up Taskforce recommendations and meet with the Treasury to influence incoming R&D tax relief changes. We engaged on Net Zero and sustainability through the Life Sciences Council, joined government workshops on Genome UK and cell and gene therapies, and fed into government consultations on the future strategy for batch testing and proposals to increase MHRA’s statutory fees.

Download Influencing and shaping our sector - BIA update (July - October 2022) report for further details on the BIA’s work this quarter.