Labour will put Scotland at "global forefront" of life sciences – Sarwar

Labour will put Scotland at the “global forefront” of the medical research and life sciences crucial to tackling deadly diseases like cancer, Scottish Labour's leader has pledged.

On a General Election campaign visit, Anas Sarwar will set out how a Labour government would back life sciences and “world-leading” medical research in Scotland.

Scotland's life sciences sector – covering health research, manufacturing, farming technology and the services that support them – was worth more than £10bn in 2021, the latest available data.

But despite Scotland's creativity and innovative history, over the past 17 years the SNP government has had failed to maximise the opportunities.

The life sciences industry is a key plank of both Labour's Industrial Strategy and Scottish Labour's Blueprint for Economic Growth, and Labour recently published a Life Sciences sector plan to create thousands of jobs and inject growth into research and development investment. 

Right across the UK, Labour will work with devolved governments to support life sciences and medical research and unlock economic and health benefits. 

Scotland punches above its weight with the number of world-leading universities that attract spin-out investment and Labour would turbocharge this with plans to ensure spin-outs thrive in the long-term and continue to create wealth within Scottish communities.

Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour Leader, said: “Life sciences is a Scottish success story – creating jobs and attracting investment while making a crucial contribution to the fight against diseases like Scotland's biggest killer, cancer.

"But this fantastic sector is being held back by two bad governments putting needless obstacles in its way.

“Tory chaos and SNP incompetence have undermined Scotland's world-class research sector, but Labour will back these key industries and unlock the benefits for our economy and our healthcare system.

“A Labour government will ensure Scotland is at the global forefront of life sciences and on the cutting edge of medical research, making these industries an unstoppable force in our economy.

“This is an opportunity for change that Scotland cannot afford to miss.

“Every vote for Scottish Labour is a vote for a Labour government that will unlock the full potential of Scotland's life science sector, drive forward medical research and deliver growth and jobs.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

Scottish Government statistics on the life sciences sector are available here https://www.gov.scot/publications/growth-sector-statistics/

Life sciences and research are key planks of Labour's Industrial Strategy and Scottish Labour's Blueprint for Economic Growth in Scotland.

Labour's life sciences sector plan was published in January 2024 and set out some of the actions a UK Government would take to support and drive growth in life sciences, including: 

Labour's Industrial Strategy:

• Bolster the Life Sciences Council and ensure its decisions are acted upon by having it report directly into the Industrial Strategy Council.

Providing stability and certainty for innovation by taking a long-term approach to public R&D funding:

• Create a more certain funding environment and a more streamlined funding process, to end Tory short-termism and attract long-term investment. We will set 10-year budgets for key R&D institutions such as UKRI.

• Increase the number of spinouts coming out of universities, and structure the innovation funding system to ensure more of them successfully scale-up.

Harnessing data to improve services for patients and power cutting-edge medical research:

• Deliver on work underway to create linked Secure Data Environments.

• Ensure proper federation of data sets, with a single access point for researchers to use data from all our genomic resources (UK Biobank, OFH, GEL, NIHR Bioresource).

Increasing access to finance:

• Undertake a broader in-government pensions review.

• Empower the British Business Bank (BBB) with a more ambitious remit: A future Labour government will look to empower the BBB with a more ambitious remit focused on providing growth capital, enabling regional development, and streamlining support offerings for SMEs.

Improving the business environment:

• Maintain the current structure of R&D tax credits over the next parliament, while cracking down on fraudulent claims and those made in error.

• Evaluate the impact of the R&D tax credit scheme on a sector-by-sector basis, starting with the Life Sciences industry.

• Labour is committed to maintaining the patent box regime and protecting the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCT).

Modernising and unblocking the regulatory regime:

• Create a Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) to hold regulators accountable for driving innovation where appropriate and for delays that are holding back innovation. The RIO will bring together the Regulation Executive and the secretariat for the Regulatory Horizons Council.

• Ensuring the NHS is supporting innovation to improve health outcomes.

• Speed up recruitment: by making sure that patients who are interested in participating in research can be reached quickly and easily.

• Give more people the chance to participate: wherever they live in Britain, rather than having research opportunities concentrated on where the big centres are, by identifying patients who would benefit through NHS data and working with devolved nations so patients can access clinical trials regardless of which NHS they reside in.

• Improve the diversity of people who participate: so we test treatments on populations that better reflect the people who need them.

IP/ Trade

• Publish a trade strategy which sets out clear priorities for vital growth sectors like life sciences.

• Give the Board of Trade a proper purpose as an independent advisory agency, accountable to the Secretary of State, advising on the impacts of regulation on trade and horizon scanning for opportunities.

• Ensure reciprocal levels of IP protection in countries with which the UK trades while maintaining our continued support of the WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

• Use bilateral and multilateral negotiations as an opportunity to remove redundant or duplicative requirements UK medicines face when accessing markets overseas, and maximise opportunities presented by our high regulatory standards to minimise regulatory trade barriers.