Dame Emma, who will leave GSK in January after eight years at the helm, stressed that GSK remains committed to the UK, noting that the interview was being carried out in its new global headquarters in London.
“No one should be deluded that the UK is going to be a massive scale market, a domestic market, but it can be an exporter of innovation in life sciences,” she says.
“For GSK, it’s 2% of our sales are here. More than 50% are in the US. But we’re very heavily invested, and remain committed to being invested in terms of manufacturing and research and development.”
Despite challenges facing Britain’s pharmaceuticals industry, Dame Emma welcomes the deal to scrap tariffs on UK drug shipments to the US as “a step in the right direction” for Britain.
The deal means the UK will pay more for medicines through the NHS – in return for a guarantee that US import taxes on pharmaceuticals made in the UK will remain at zero for three years.
Dame Emma says it is a welcome reversal of a long term decline in the portion of the NHS budget spent on medicines compared to other countries’ health systems.
The move, she suggests, will encourage the kind of innovation that supports ground-breaking new medicines, such as GSK’s new asthma drug which can be taken twice a year and could slash hospital admissions by 70% for serious asthma sufferers.
GSK hopes the new treatment will be approved for use by the NHS within weeks.
