Beyond the usual noise around NHS waiting lists, health barely featured at this year’s party conferences.
There was little serious discussion of how the wider health and life sciences sector fits into the next government’s plans. The political conversation remained narrow, tactical, and NHS-centred, while the policy challenges facing pharma, med-tech and digital health continue to grow.
The one consistent reference point across events was the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan – the framework now doing most of the heavy lifting for health policy. It signals ambition around prevention, digitisation and community care, but it’s also a reminder of how little new political energy is being spent on the sector. In the absence of fresh announcements, the plan has become the default answer to every question about reform.
A system reduced to the NHS waiting list
At both Labour and Conservative conferences, “health” largely meant “the NHS.” Political attention was fixed on fixing waiting lists, improving access, and tackling workforce shortages. That made for familiar soundbites, but little substance.
Behind closed doors, businesses and stakeholders were hoping for signals about pricing, investment, and the future of the UK life sciences ecosystem. None came. The underlying policy vacuum remains: how does Britain remain globally competitive on research and innovation while maintaining a publicly funded healthcare model under strain?
10 Year Health Plan
The 10 Year Health Plan is meant to be the Government’s bridge between short-term fixes and long-term transformation. On paper, it sets out a modern agenda: prevention, digitisation, community-based care, and system integration. In practice, it risks becoming a holding pattern – a pattern the sector is likely already familiar with from previous NHS strategies.
The plan provides direction, but not urgency. There’s little clarity on funding, delivery, or accountability. Without new policy energy behind it, it risks becoming the health equivalent of industrial strategy: a useful framework that everyone references but few actively drive forward. Labour conference nudged this along – but only inches.
For business, that creates both uncertainty and opportunity. The space left by policy drift is space that can be filled by delivery partners, innovators and investors who can show government how transformation actually happens.
Digital health as political shorthand
Digitisation remains the one area of visible ambition. Both main parties see it as the lever for efficiency: faster diagnostics, fewer missed appointments, better use of data. But much of the political rhetoric frames it as a convenience issue rather than a fundamental redesign of care. With a focus on convenience and efficiency, we also shouldn’t forget who is really at the centre of the NHS – patients.
There’s an implicit recognition that the system can’t deliver reform without technology, but we still wait for the detailed plan for infrastructure, data sharing or workforce capability. The result is progress that feels tactical rather than strategic – innovation applied to problems, not built into the system.
The quiet rebuild with pharma
While public debate focused on hospitals and doctors, industry conversations turned to the UK’s relationship with pharma. After a difficult few years marked by pricing disputes, slower approvals, and lost investment, there are early signs of a thaw.
The Government appears to recognise the need to repair relationships and make the UK a more attractive market for innovation. The recently rocky public relationship between UK-based pharma companies and the government seems to have settled, but businesses still want clarity on what comes next for pricing, manufacturing, and research incentives.
Elsewhere, Reform UK continue to attempt to inject culture-war rhetoric into health. Anti-vaccine sentiment and US-style health populism don’t translate easily into the UK context, where the NHS remains both trusted and politically protected. That doesn’t mean the politics of health are immune from division – just that the battleground here tends to be about delivery and trust, not ideology.
What’s next
The policy watchlist for the next year is short but significant. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will test Labour’s public health instincts. The looming “patent cliff” – with major drugs losing exclusivity – could reshape pharma economics and prompt a new wave of M&A. And the delayed AI for Science strategy will show how government intends to regulate technology that increasingly sits at the intersection of health and innovation.
But above all, the 10 Year Health Plan will remain the backbone of policy. Everything else now flows from it. The real challenge for government will be to move from framework to delivery – and to do so without getting lost in another cycle of short-term firefighting.
For organisations in health and life sciences, the message is clear: don’t wait for direction from government. The next phase of reform will be shaped by delivery, not speeches. Businesses that position themselves as partners in prevention, digitisation, and system-wide efficiency will be best placed to shape the future.
In the middle of an election cycle, parties can be forgiven for their attention being elsewhere. But, there is every possibility that one of the key battlegrounds of the next election will be health, so the task for Government is for the ambition in their plans to become tangible, and noticeable changes.