Memorandum submitted by the Association
of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI)
The Association of the British Pharmaceutical
Industry (ABPI), the trade association for the pharmaceutical
and biopharmaceutical industry in the UK, welcomes the Education
and Skills Select Committee Inquiry into the future sustainability
of the higher education sector.
Pharmaceutical companies employ 73,000 people
directly and invest around £9 million every day in the UK,
amounting to 25% of all private sector R&D investment. This
figure is substantially greater than pharmaceutical company investments
in any other European country. The pharmaceutical sector is also
a significant supporter of academic research, hosting over 650
PhD students in laboratories and funding over 300 separate collaborative
research projects. This equates to funding over £70 million
on collaborative research (excluding contract and clinical research)
and provides access to new compounds, technologies and resources
students and universities would not otherwise have. However research
carried out by ABPI amongst its member companies indicates that,
in the last two years, the numbers of both studentships and grants
supported in the UK have decreased; the latter by nearly 25%.
The reasons for this include the move towards full economic costing
in UK universities, and the high quality of research in countries
such as India and China.
The chemical and biological sciences are core
disciplines in drug discovery and development. A number of research
based pharmaceutical companies have major facilities in the UK
in order to interact with the excellent academic research base
and to recruit well trained graduates, postgraduates and post
docs from its Higher Education Institutions.
Over the last fifteen years there has been a
fundamental shift in the sector—mergers and organic growth
have led to truly multi-national companies that invest in R&D
and manufacturing on a global basis. Today there are no global
R&D headquarters for any of the major companies in the UK.
The creation of a strong emerging biopharmaceutical
sector in the UK and the strength of the contract research sector
have created a hotbed of new companies and technologies. Yet these
companies also operate on a global stage. The Government can no
longer assume even those companies with shares listed in the UK,
or emerging biotechnology enterprises, will continue to invest
here—it is up to Government to sustain and enhance a competitive
environment for pharmaceutical R&D.
Four factors are critical to the success of
the UK in retaining R&D investment: access to skills and knowledge;
a good regulatory climate; competitive cost base for collaborative
research and a market that supports innovation. Unless the UK
is able to sustain and improve the environment in relation to
these four issues it is difficult to see how the Government vision
of a science and innovation-led economy can be realised.
KEY POINTS
Higher Education must be aligned to the strategic
needs of the UK.
— Enhancing excellence in teaching
and learning is vital, but may not be compatible with an intake
comprising 50% of young people and a sustainable higher education
system. High quality teaching for undergraduate science degrees
must be maintained. A pool of quality science talent should be
created not just to enter industry, but to sustain academe and
provide the science teachers who can encourage pupils to pursue
science in Higher Education.
— Further enhancing the internationally-competitive
research capacity is a worthwhile goal; however it should be noted
that University science departments with world class research
teams do not always produce graduates with the skills industry
needs, or high numbers of graduates who wish to pursue a career
in science. Industry is most likely to value the skills and knowledge
developed during a four year MChem/MSci "sandwich" course.
— Companies which support collaborative
research with universities are interested in collaborating with
departments that deliver quality science and show evidence of
a leadership position in the field of interest. These are not
necessarily those with the highest RAE ratings.
— The contribution of Higher Education
to the economy and society needs a clear steer from Government.
ABPI members are finding it increasingly difficult to source certain
types of graduates and skills within the UK—especially those
with good quality chemistry degrees and in vivo pharmacologists.
Many graduates have not had the opportunity to develop the excellent
basic practical skills that industry seeks and may not have studied
a single subject in depth, but instead have taken a science course
in which the science has been diluted by study of other subjects.
Subjects of strategic importance to the UK economy
must be supported more generously.
— Whilst the recent focus on, and Government
support for the physical sciences, particularly chemistry, are
welcomed, we have equal concern over the state of core biological
science provision in the UK. Whilst the top level HESA statistics
show biological science undergraduate numbers to be increasing,
this is due to substantial increases in the number of students
studying psychology and sports science; those studying the core
biological subjects are decreasing or increasing only marginally,
as Table 1 shows.
Table 1
SUBJECT OF HE QUALIFICATIONS OBTAINED 2000-01
TO 2004-05—TOTAL NUMBER OF FIRST DEGREES
|
| 2000-01
| 2001-02 | 2002-03
| 2003-04 | 2004-05
|
|
| Biological sciences (total) | 18,890
| 18,495 | 23,725
| 25,955 | 27,200
|
| Broadly based programmes within biological sciences
| 680 | 520
| 240 | 230
| 200 |
| Biology | 4,405
| 3,915 | 4,430
| 4,485 | 4,585
|
| Botany | 85 |
80 | 55
| 80 | 60
|
| Zoology | 890
| 910 | 825
| 895 | 895
|
| Genetics | 500
| 510 | 575
| 580 | 550
|
| Microbiology | 610
| 610 | 850
| 800 | 820
|
| Sports science | |
| 3,745 | 4,975
| 5,630 |
| Molecular biology, biophysics, biochemistry |
1,910 | 1,905
| 1,960 | 1,785
| 1,830 |
| Psychology | 6,000
| 6,085 | 8,900
| 10,405 | 11,435
|
| Others in biological sciences | 3,810
| 3,965 | 2,145
| 1,725 | 1,195
|
|
Source: HESA. Information taken from table 13 (2000-01
and 2001-02) and table 13a (2002-03 onwards) of "Students
in Higher Education Institutions" statistics.
— Changes made by HEFCE to subject weightings in
2004 have made laboratory based courses of importance to the economy,
less viable. The reduction in the qualifier for laboratory based
courses, from its previous level of 2 to 1.7, has resulted in
the increase in funding for these courses being much less than
that for clinical and lecture based courses. It is vital that
universities are funded to invest in high quality facilities and
provide incentives, such as tuition fee waivers and bursaries,
to attract students onto these courses. The future productivity
of the UK depends on an increase in practical science and technical
skills and increased numeracy.
— Regional provision of strategically important
subjects is likely to become even more important as increased
tuition fees impact on the number of students who can afford to
study away from home.
— An overall strategic plan for support of teaching
and research in the UK is required
Many of the points made above are expanded in our November
2005 report, Sustaining the Skills Pipeline in the pharmaceutical
and biopharmaceutical industries.
December 2006
|
