Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

UK R&D cred­it in­crease, faster drug ap­provals promised in bud­get speech

When Chan­cel­lor of the Ex­che­quer Je­re­my Hunt an­nounced that he had plans to scale back R&D tax cred­its in No­vem­ber, it sparked back­lash in a coun­try that has seen a de­cline in clin­i­cal tri­als and drug pric­ing ques­tion marks.

But Hunt, the for­mer UK health sec­re­tary, said to­day in his Spring 2023 bud­get speech that he had re­turned with a “more ro­bust” R&D tax cred­it scheme.

Part of that is an “en­hanced cred­it” for qual­i­fy­ing small- or medi­um-sized bio­phar­ma busi­ness­es. If a com­pa­ny spends 40% or more of its to­tal ex­pen­di­ture on R&D, it can claim a cred­it worth £27 for every £100 they spend, as well as a £1.8 bil­lion sup­port pack­age for 20,000 com­pa­nies.

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