Sir Keir Starmer has faced criticism for allegedly rerouting £3 billion a year from NHS services to satisfy Donald Trump, amid a controversial drug pricing deal between the UK and the US.
Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, claimed taxpayers’ money was being “rerouted at the request of Donald Trump” from frontline NHS care “into the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies”.
The deal, agreed in early December, will see the UK pay up to 25% more for new medicines by 2035 to prevent US-imposed tariffs on pharmaceutical products.
Under the agreement, the baseline threshold used by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to assess the cost-effectiveness of medicines will increase by 25%, from £20,000–£30,000 per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) to £25,000–£35,000.
The government argues this change will allow NICE to approve innovative medicines that deliver significant health improvements, which may previously have been rejected due to cost concerns. Officials suggest the deal will cost around £1 billion annually by 2029.
However, others, including the Lancet medical journal, estimate the NHS could face costs of up to £3 billion a year, depending on how many new medicines are approved.
Ms Cooper criticised the agreement as “outrageous”, arguing it was made without parliamentary scrutiny or public debate and was “just a decision by the Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer”.
She urged Sir Keir to “scrap this £3 billion Trump tax” and redirect the funds to social care, stating:
“There is no doubt at all that this money will not bring lots of new drugs to our NHS. Independent experts suggest it could just be three or four, possibly five at most. What this money will do is simply increase the amount we pay for existing drugs, rerouted from frontline services. That is why our message is clear: Scrap this £3bn ‘Trump tax’ and fix social care now.”
NHS leaders initially welcomed the deal, highlighting that tens of thousands of patients could access groundbreaking new medicines. Yet they warned the NHS’s current funding levels are insufficient to absorb the costs and stressed that existing care and treatment budgets must not be compromised.
Whitehall sources claimed the price increase would not be taken from standard NHS budgets, but from hundreds of millions of pounds allocated to cover the early years of the deal.
Science Secretary Liz Kendall defended the agreement, stating it would “enable and incentivise life sciences companies to continue to invest and innovate right here in the UK”.
Ms Cooper, however, accused the government of weakness, arguing it should “stand strong” against Donald Trump, who she said only responds to “the language of strength”. She added that the administration had shown “all spin and no substance”, noting that only a single meeting on social care had been held despite promises to launch cross-party talks a year ago.
