Sarah Woolnough, Chief Executive of The King’s Fund, responded to the Labour Party’s plans for the UK life sciences sector

‘This is an ambitious and welcome vision. A thriving UK life sciences sector can bring real benefits for people, making it easier and quicker to get the latest treatments from the laboratory to patients. 

‘Making life sciences a key responsibility of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is a welcome proposal and would help cement the link between the life sciences industry and health and care services. It is also good to see a recognition that current approaches to clinical trials can entrench health inequalities by inadvertently excluding some communities from trials. Making it easier for people to take part in research, wherever they live, would increase diversity and be a welcome step.  

‘Turning the ambitions set out in this plan into reality will require detailed thinking on how to overcome knotty issues, such as building public trust so health data can be used for innovations and achieving the long-held ambition of better-connected IT systems to share that data. Similarly, the commitment to provide long-term budget certainty to life sciences is a welcome ambition, although history tells us it can be hard to deliver. This plan sets out many welcome goals – implementing the necessary changes to achieve those goals will be the real challenge.’