Antibiotics should be taxed to fund research into resistance, says Lord O’Neill

Exclusive: Former Goldman Sachs chief says the danger to human health from antibiotic resistance is ‘a much more troubling train wreck’ than the financial crash of 2008

Lord O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs chief and now UK minister has been tasked with chairing the Government’s Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (Rex)

Common antibiotics used for animals and humans may need to be taxed to pay for research into new drugs to tackle the crisis of antibiotic resistance, the man charged by the Government to come up with solutions to the problem has suggested.

In an exclusive interview with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent, Lord Jim O’Neill said the danger to human health from antibiotic resistance was “a much more troubling train wreck” than the financial crash of 2008.

Lord O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs chief and now UK minister, said there was an urgent need for industry leaders and consumers to “change mind sets” – and that a tax on antibiotics might even be one way to tackle the crisis.

Lord O’Neill, the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, has spent the past 23 months chairing the Government’s Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR Review), and he is due to publish its final report and recommendations on Thursday. It will include a tax on antibiotics as one possible mechanism to raise money to address AMR, although it is not highlighted as a preferred option.

“The idea of using the tax system, or some other form of charging, is definitely something we have explored and have ideas about on the pharma industry,” he said. “And so why would it not be something that would be relevant for all those participants that are part of what in classic economic terms would be regarded as a market failure problem?”

If big food producers don’t see that it’s in their own enlightened self interest to shift to a more sustainable model then it will inevitably become a policy attraction at some point

&#13; <p>Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord O’Neill</p>&#13;

He said such mechanisms for tackling drug resistance were very much in keeping with the strategy of the Government-commissioned review. “The whole approach has been thinking about it from an economic perspective, and assuming all the knowledge we can on the science and therefore we’re trying to think of the right incentives, rewards, penalties in order to come up with solutions,” he said.

Drawing on his experiences of the recent financial crash, O’Neill said he wanted to encourage consumers and companies to realise it was in their interests to act before it was too late.

He said: “I’m saying that as someone whose come obviously out of the finance industry and been through the financial crisis. You know, it’s like, that was a train wreck. How did nobody ever notice it but plenty of us could see it coming – we just didn’t know when and what [was] the right thing to do.

“But here you can see a very different, much more troubling train wreck coming because of the lives lost and all the rest of it.”

Although the overuse of antibiotics in human healthcare is widely viewed as the bigger cause of drug resistant bacteria, veterinary use of the drugs outstrips human use globally. However, until recently, little attention has been focused on this area.

Human health is at risk from antibiotic resistant infections being passed on via the food chain (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Joe Raedle/Getty)

In December, the AMR Review called for a reduction in antibiotic use in livestock farming, and for drugs that are important for human medicines to be curtailed or even banned on farms.

The body warned that human health was at risk from antibiotic resistant infections being passed on via the food chain, from direct contact with infected animals and from farm waste.

In his interview with the bureau, Lord O’Neill was guarded about the contents of next week’s report, but said it would not specifically call for a tax on food companies.

However, when asked whether some kind of charge similar to the “sugar tax” could be on the agenda, he said it was a move that could be expected somewhere down the line.

He said: “If big food producers don’t see that it’s in their own enlightened self interest to shift to a more sustainable model then it will inevitably become a policy attraction at some point. Because as we get closer and closer to ten million people around the world dying […] one thing that you’re guaranteed governments do – and saying that as somebody who’s here inside a government – you know [when] something goes wrong, somebody gets blamed.

In 2014, the review’s first report warned that failure to tackle drug-resistant infections could lead to at least 10 million extra deaths a year by 2050 and end up costing the global economy up to $100 trillion (£70 trillion).

The stark figures were the result of the first attempt to quantify the “cost” of the resistance crisis, a move designed to galvanise Governmental action globally.

Despite the scale of the problem – and the relatively little focus on farm use of antibiotics so far – Lord O’Neill said he was encouraged by the actions of some large food companies, citing a decision by McDonald’s to prohibit certain antibiotics in chicken production in the US.

“I call it the Shake Shack factor... and it’s a great development because as you know, we find in all walks of life, you can’t beat the power of the consumer,” he said.

“If big consumer [companies] start to realise that the emerging generation actually wants to eat better stuff and wants to eat at Shake Shack and not McDonald’s and not Burger King and God knows what else, you know they’d better shift pretty quickly or they’ve got problems. That’s a really good development that we’re eager to encourage more of.”

Although the AMR review’s work has focused on the global problem, rather than the UK specifically, Lord O’Neill said he was confident senior figures in the Government were now taking the issue seriously.

He said Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, had also recently invited him and Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies to present to all of the permanent heads of department at their weekly meeting.

The minister confirmed that a cross-Government group – including officials from the Treasury, Foreign Office, Cabinet Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – would continue to work on the issue after the review’s formal remit ends with the report’s publication.

He said it would focus on proposals to finance new drugs at the G20 meeting of world leaders in the autumn, and the development of a global UN agreement around antibiotic use in agriculture.