A shadowy medicine import treaty between the UK and the US will cost the NHS billions and divert funds from doctors, nurses, and cancer scans, according to a new analysis.
The deal, struck in December between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Donald Trump, commits the UK to spend more on branded drugs in exchange for avoiding US tariffs on British pharmaceutical exports.
Critics say the agreement was rushed through parliament with minimal scrutiny, using a statutory instrument to bypass full debate.
Only this week did MPs finally debate the changes, long after they took effect, Labour backbencher Rachael Maskell noted.
Costs and Consequences
The government initially claimed the deal would cost around £1 billion per year.
However, an analysis published in the British Medical Journal suggests the true cost is nearly three times that amount in the short term.
By the end of the decade, the total cost could reach £44.7 billion, the researchers estimate.
That is triple the £15 billion the government recently pledged for defence.
The money will flow from British taxpayers to shareholders of multinational drug companies, the study says.
Because the funds will come from the NHS budget, the analysis forecasts an extra 229,000 deaths by 2036 due to reduced spending on cancer scans, staff, and other treatments.
The academics describe this as a “conservative” estimate, but it is nearly double the avoidable deaths Britain suffered during the Covid pandemic.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting had promised that “the NHS is not on the table,” that services would not be cut to fund the deal, and that the cost would be around £1 billion a year.
All three pledges now appear false.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it does not recognise the figures but has not published its own impact assessment despite repeated requests from MPs.
The lack of democratic scrutiny has been striking. No select committee inquiry, no Commons debate until this week, and minimal media coverage.
Over the past six months, national newspapers published only eight stories on the deal, compared with 274 stories on whether Streeting would become the next Labour leader.
As the UK prepares for a new prime minister, the question remains whether the deal, cooked up in private and shrouded in secrecy, will stand.
