Big Pharma is throwing its toys out of the pram — and Wes Streeting is caught in the crossfire
The privatisation playbook: starve the NHS of funding, let public services fail, then hand them over to profiteers while blaming “inefficiency.”
EUROPEANPOWELL
Something deeply troubling is happening in Britain’s health politics, and it should make anyone who cares about the NHS sit up.
This week, the Guardian revealed that a clutch of major pharmaceutical corporations, MSD (Merck), Eli Lilly, and AstraZeneca, have shelved or delayed nearly £2 billion in planned UK investments.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/16/big-pharma-firms-uk-investment-trump-msd-eli-lilly-astrazeneca
Their excuse? That the government’s pricing and rebate scheme for branded medicines is just too “harsh” to make the UK worthwhile.
Their real message? Pay up, or we walk.
And right at the centre of this standoff is none other than Wes Streeting, Labour’s health secretary, a man who has taken hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from private healthcare-linked firms and individuals.
Corporate tantrum, political tightrope
The pharmaceutical giants are raging over the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth (VPAG). It’s a mechanism designed to stop profiteering: if drug companies’ NHS revenues rise too much, they pay back a chunk via rebates.
Streeting has called their demands for slashing these rebates “short-sighted” and insisted he won’t let them “rip off” patients or taxpayers.
On the surface, that sounds brave. But here’s the problem: these same corporations have enjoyed years of sweetheart access to Westminster, and some of their shareholders and lobbyists have been lining Streeting’s campaign coffers.
According to research by the Good Law Project, most of Streeting’s declared donations since 2015 come from people or companies tied to private health, hedge funders with medical investments, firms that recruit staff into NHS contracts, and consultancies that profit from NHS outsourcing.
That money wasn’t charity. It was an investment. And it looks like the investors aren’t getting the payback they expected.
The slow drip of NHS privatisation
This tension exposes a deeper, more dangerous dynamic: while Big Pharma wants looser pricing rules and bigger profits, the private healthcare lobby wants more NHS contracts shunted into their hands.
Both groups have a vested interest in hollowing out the public NHS, bleeding it of funds, running it down, then presenting private provision as the “only way” to save it.
Streeting’s problem is that he’s been straddling this fence. He promises to defend the NHS while quietly expanding the use of private providers to tackle waiting lists. But the more he courts corporate donors, the more those donors expect returns, and the easier it becomes to portray outsourcing and privatisation as “modernisation”.
It’s a well-worn playbook:
- starve the NHS of funding,
- let public services fail,
- then hand them over to profiteers while blaming “inefficiency.”
Public healthcare versus private profit
Make no mistake: this is a power struggle over the soul of the NHS.
Streeting may think he’s playing hardball with the drug firms, but by dancing with them in the first place, he’s legitimising their threat politics. And if he bends under pressure, he risks setting the stage for even deeper corporate capture of the UK health system.
If he refuses them, they may retaliate, by pulling more investment, delaying drug launches, or hiking UK prices. That would hurt patients, and it would also hand Big Pharma a propaganda win: “See? Public healthcare doesn’t work.”
Either way, the NHS is caught in the crossfire — and it’s ordinary people who will pay.
The choice is clear
This is not just about one policy scheme. It’s about whether we want our healthcare system run as a public service for need or as a profit engine for shareholders.
Streeting can’t have it both ways. He can either:
- Cleanly break with the corporate donors who want to carve up the NHS,
- Or keep pretending you can take their money without becoming beholden to their agenda.
But the longer he tries to do both, the more he risks sleepwalking the NHS into privatisation by stealth.
The NHS was built to be universal, free, and public. If it becomes just another playground for hedge funds and Big Pharma, it won’t be the envy of the world anymore. It will be another cautionary tale of how corporate power captures democracy.
✊ The NHS is ours. We either defend it — or we lose it.
This article (Big Pharma is throwing its toys out of the pram — and Wes Streeting is caught in the crossfire) was created and published by EuropeanPowell and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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