The panel featured Robert Ede, senior director, head of corporate affairs, Eli Lilly and Company, Sally Gainsbury, policy analyst, Nuffield Trust, and Dr Rebecca Clark, co-clinical lead, UK Vaccine Innovation Pathway.

The US drug deal will cost £1bn annually over the first three years, potentially rising to an annual £3bn spend.

Gainsbury said the deal was ‘deeply problematic' and would mean a ‘very significant redistribution of where the NHS is spending its money'.

‘We cannot spend money on new money branded drugs without taking it from somewhere else,' she added.

The policy analyst said spending money on drugs was less than effective as spending on existing services in terms of quality adjusted life years.

She said the 10-Year Health Plan presented chronic disease and old age as an economic opportunity, adding: ‘The case for the NHS is not economic. It's moral.

‘This is about industrial policy. It's not about healthcare,' she argued, adding there was a case for drugs costs being separately funded from rest of the NHS.

Better drugs access

Dr Clark argued the deal would allow access to the best drugs that patients wanted.

‘I think we should be committed to that commercial arrangement,' she said.

Ede said the UK invested the least in its medicines compared with its comparative nations and had to remain internationally competitive.

‘The UK has a choice: does it want to compete with the US and China or does want to see its life sciences industry deteriorate?' he asked.