Burnham urged to ditch ‘dangerous’ UK-US NHS drug deal

Andy Burnham is being urged to scrap the UK-US trade deal on medicines as health organisations and doctors’ groups warn it is dangerous and prioritises pharmaceutical company profits over the lives of NHS patients.

Ministers have defended the agreement, signed last December, as a way of helping British drug exports to the US avoid tariffs and giving patients access to potentially life-extending drugs that would otherwise be denied.

But they have been accused of caving in to US demands to spend billions of pounds a year extra on drugs supplied to the NHS after pressure from Donald Trump. Last week, the Guardian reported that the NHS would have to divert £45bn from essential services to pay for new medicines as a result of the deal, leading to more than 200,000 avoidable patient deaths.

Now Burnham – who is expected to succeed Keir Starmer as Labour leader and prime minister within weeks – is facing calls to ditch the agreement and focus instead on securing the long-term future of the NHS.

In a letter to the Makerfield MP seen by the Guardian, 19 health groups call on Burnham to scrap the deal amid growing alarm that the terms of the agreement could prove “deadly” for patients.

In total, £44.7bn in NHS cash will be diverted from health services by 2036 in order to pay more for new medicines under the deal, unless extra funding is made available to cover the additional costs, analysis suggests.

Reduced NHS spending on services will have an adverse effect on the nation’s public health, causing 229,000 excess deaths by 2036, academics from the University of York, the University of Liverpool and Christchurch hospital in New Zealand found.

In the letter coordinated by the SOS NHS coalition, the organisations call on Burnham to make a “decisive break” with recent policy and commit to rebuilding the NHS.

Signatories including Medact, the Doctors’ Association UK and Doctors in Unite also urge Burnham to rethink PFI arrangements at neighbourhood health centres, recent NHS job cuts, the expansion of private providers across health services and Palantir’s NHS contract.

Dr Tony O’Sullivan, a co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public and a retired consultant paediatrician, said: “Donald Trump’s demands for higher drug prices are set to drain an estimated £45bn from the NHS over the next decade. At a time when patients are waiting longer than ever for treatment, handing over billions more to US pharmaceutical giants is like trying to put out a fire while pouring petrol on the flames.

“The NHS is already on life support. Every year, around 16,000 people die unnecessarily because of delays in emergency care, maternity services continue to fail families, and millions are stuck on waiting lists. The last thing the NHS needs is to be forced to bankroll bigger profits for multinational drug companies.

“We are asking Andy Burnham to meet with campaigners and listen to those with deep experience of the NHS and social care. His transition into government is a chance to draw a line under policies that have put corporate interests ahead of patients, restore public trust and staff morale, and recognise that health, care and education are the foundations of a thriving society and economy.”

Hope Worsdale, of the patient campaign group Just Treatment, said the deal was signed with Trump “to inflate drug company profits” and would condemn hundreds of thousands of NHS patients to avoidable deaths.

“It’s a deeply shocking betrayal of the NHS and the British public. Andy Burnham has said this is the last chance to save the Labour party. It is also the last chance to save the NHS,” she said. “As prime minister he must deliver the life-saving investment into the NHS that his predecessors failed to prioritise, scrap the dangerous pharma deal and stop private companies ripping off our NHS. Patients deserve and demand nothing less.”

Burnham did not respond to questions from the Guardian about his position on the UK-US trade deal or whether he would seek to scrap it.

In his last stint in government, Burnham was the health secretary. Soon after assuming the role in 2009, he announced that the NHS would be the “preferred provider” of NHS care, in a move designed to reverse the mounting privatisation of the health service.

A year later, he gave the green light to a PFI deal for Royal Liverpool hospital. Run by the facilities management company Carillion, it missed its completion deadline by several years and cost £300m more than it was originally budgeted for. Carillion later went into liquidation.