No excuse for not paying their taxes
THE pharmaceutical industry isn’t as highly regarded as it ought to be. Conspiracy theories about Big Pharma abound, invariably centred on allegations that the big companies which dominate the medical drugs market operate for sinister purposes and against the public good.
It shouldn’t be like this: the purpose of the pharmaceutical industry is to devise medicines that on one level can ease pain and at another are life-saving. People working in an industry with such aims should be seen as heroic, surely. But that’s rarely the case. In countries like the United States, where people have to pay for their own medicine and the treatment that goes with it, they are especially unpopular.
They are seen as leeches who make exorbitant profits out of sick people.
The same applies in less developed countries, where the companies have been accused of exploiting people who are both sick and poor.
In Wales, where we have the advantage of a national health service where we don’t pay at the point of treatment or for prescriptions, the concerns are somewhat different.
It’s the NHS that has to pay pharmaceutical companies for their drugs, and when particular drugs for certain conditions are extremely expensive, they may not be made available to patients.
Sometimes this leads to heartbreaking campaigns where seriously ill patients and their relatives plead with the Welsh Government to authorise the purchase of the drug needed to prolong life. Often the drug companies themselves are hovering in the background, offering advice and materials on how to conduct the campaign.
When accused of charging too much for their products, the companies insist that much of their revenue is ploughed back into research and development for new drugs.
That may be a fair argument – but only up to a point. Revelations about large-scale tax avoidance in today’s report from Oxfam will do nothing to dispel concerns about the way Big Pharma operates.
There can be no excuse for large multinational companies that do not pay their taxes. Governments have a duty to tackle such behaviour head on, and to co-operate internationally. The UK has a particular responsibility in this area, given that a high proportion of tax havens are in remnants of our former empire.