Brexit would irreparably damage UK pharma industry

A Brexit in the upcoming EU referendum could directly damage the UK pharmaceutical industry, according to NonStop Recruitment.

Matt Beedle, Team Leader within NonStop Pharma comments: “From our analysis and the many others that have been released it’s clear that the pharmaceutical and life sciences fields would be directly impacted in the case of a Brexit. Yes, the situation isn’t perfect at the moment however, the outlook would still be far worse if we were to vote leave. In this instance there’s a high chance that the EMA (European Medicines Agency) would relocate and therefore many of the pharma companies headquartered in the UK could leave – potentially to Ireland. This is because one of the major reasons many pharma firms have their headquarters in the UK is due to the proximity of the London-based EMA. In addition we’d still need to trade in the single market, however we would no longer have any say in what regulations we would be following, which would obviously damage our competitiveness and would likely weaken our position significantly. The sector would also struggle to keep hold of the thousands of European professionals who currently provide expertise to firms on these shores. We have such a powerful industry here that it seems like a huge error to leave, particularly at a time when our industrial output is growing at its fastest rate for four years, which has been heavily boosted by the pharma sector.”

“For NonStop as a business a leave vote would be particularly unwelcome. We place a big focus on providing the best possible working environment, part of which involves allowing our employees to work in any of our offices across Europe. A Brexit would mean we would face a much larger administrative burden to continue having a diverse workforce, something which we know directly contributes to our success as a business. And it’s not just us that would be affected, the knock on effects would impact all UK businesses that utilise the expertise of European professionals.”