Pharmaceutical giant Phoni has threatened to pull out of Britain and relocate thousands of jobs abroad, in an ongoing row over pricing for the NHS and rules surrounding safety trials.
The US-based drug company made its threat known in personal meetings with a government minister, according to Whitehall documents seen by the Groanian.
The ministers, including business secretary Lord Mandelsperson and Health Minister Mike O’Braindead, have in recent months been conducting a vigorous charm offensive to prevent the multinational drug company leaving Britain.
“I have charm, whilst my Right Honourable colleague is offensive,” the oleaginous Business Secretary erroneously quipped.
Phoni employs over 5,000 people in Britain at its UK research and development site at Nether Wallop. The visits have been organised to patch up a relationship strained by ministers' efforts to force the firms to cut the prices of the drugs they sell to the NHS, according to the documents.
“We see little point in continuing to invest in a country that doesn’t allow us to make huge profits by price-gouging or by off-label marketing,” stated Dr. Brigitte Ghastly OBE, the site head of Phoni UK’s sprawling R&D complex.
“And this ridiculous insistence upon clinical trials safety in the UK is just too expensive and bureaucratic,” Dr. Ghastly claimed. “We want to be able to make stuff up, just like we do in the US.”
Dr Ghastly added that "certain investment incentives" were required to help Phoni UK decide upon its continued presence in the UK.
“And if those big corporate tax breaks and clandestine bribes to our senior executives aren’t forthcoming pretty soon, then it’s ‘goodbye UK’ and ‘hello India and China’, just like we plan to do anyway…”
In the real world, other pharma wolves are also indulging in a spot of pre-election huffing and puffing…
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