Lib Dem Daisy Cooper Accuses Sir Keir Starmer of Diverting NHS Funds Amid UK-US Drug Pricing Deal
Lib Dem MP Daisy Cooper has accused Sir Keir Starmer of diverting £3 billion of NHS funding annually, alleging that the money is being rerouted from frontline NHS services to pharmaceutical company profits as part of a drug pricing deal with the United States. The UK-US deal, agreed in December 2025, requires a 25% increase in prices for new medicines by 2035 to avoid US tariffs, while raising the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) cost-effectiveness threshold by 25%, from a range of £20,000-£30,000 to £25,000-£35,000. The UK government claims the agreement will enable NICE to approve more innovative medicines, with the cost projected at around £1 billion per year by 2029, although The Lancet suggests it could reach up to £3 billion depending on how many medicines are approved. NHS leaders initially supported the assessment of the deal but warned that budgets are too tight to absorb these increased costs and stressed that care budgets must not be raided. Whitehall sources maintain that the anticipated higher prices will not come from current NHS service budgets but from the additional hundreds of millions of pounds provided to the NHS last year to cover early-year costs. Daisy Cooper criticised the secretive nature of the deal, stating it was decided without public debate or parliamentary scrutiny, and urged the government to abandon the so-called "£3bn 'Trump tax'" and reinvest those funds into social care. Science Secretary Liz Kendall defended the agreement, arguing that it would incentivise life sciences investment in the UK.
