Publications

This is the Stockholm Network submission to the Department of Health consultation on a value-based approach to pricing branded medicines in the NHS.

It argues that whilst the Stockholm Network supports the reform’s proposed aims and their emphasis on better patient access to effective and innovative medicines, it has concerns about whether a move to VBP is the best way to achieve this. In particular, it notes that the proposals have the potential to be counterproductive and could, in fact, hinder pharmaceutical innovation in the UK as well as restricting patient access to medicines in the future. There is also unease at the imposed nature of these reforms, which have been formulated in opposition without adequate consultation with relevant stakeholders, and the seemingly top-down nature with which they are likely to be implemented.

The Stockholm Network hopes that this consultation will allow a more open dialogue to emerge and that the government is willing to revise the reforms to allow changes to be made to make them more practical and implementable.

The Stockholm Network Energy & Environment Programme promotes a practical market-oriented approach to meeting our future energy challenges while also addressing environmental and climate change concerns. With this in mind, we have published this Experts` Series paper on the EU Emissions Trading System. It is written by Andrés Jonathan Drew, a researcher in the Law Department at the London School of Economics and at the Met Office Hadley Centre, and looks to discuss cap and trade in Europe as it prepares for its third phase

The paper analyses successes and failures in the previous two phases and considers what lessons can be learnt from these, as well as from Hayek`s “knowledge problem” theory. Paul Domjan, Stockholm Network Energy Fellow, provides a foreword.

In this issue of the Eye on Europe and in our forthcoming London conference, we focus our attention on the prospects for the welfare state after the crisis. Since its inception, the Stockholm Network has set out to debate the way public services are provided in Europe and to argue for greater efficiency and consumer choice. Britain has experimented with aspects of market-oriented reform and with ideas from other countries but such reforms are nevertheless still viewed with suspicion. Yet a new government and a new economy makes a revolution in the way welfare services are provided in the UK unavoidable. No longer just the territory of think tanks, the debate about the role of the state in public services is now leading the news agenda.

In this light, our lead article by Gavin Poole, executive director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), and a speaker at our forthcoming event, examines the role of the CSJ in helping to devise the universal credit and other reform proposals and what this means for the future of Britain’s welfare system.

Elsewhere in this issue, Matt Hayward reviews a new book Globalisation Fractures by Charles Dumas, published by Profile Books, a painstakingly rigorous study of global economic imbalances premised on a simple observation: “For every borrower there is a lender.” Our think tank profiles include Fondazione ResPublica and Fondazione Magna Carta in Italy, as well as CEPOS in Denmark and their increasingly successful attempts to influence both policy reforms and policy debates across Europe.

Last but not least, Paul Healy shines a spotlight on our forthcoming work on value-based pricing – the new system being proposed for reimbursing medicines purchased by the NHS. Many questions remain about the new system but the key issues we raise relate to its impact on innovation, the desire for enhanced access to medicines and the need to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach.

Gesundheit! is the Stockholm Network’s bi-monthly newsletter that highlights developments in contemporary European health and welfare policy. Issue 8 focuses on the debate surrounding the UK Coalition Government’s reforms of the NHS. Early in his term, health secretary Andrew Lansley laid out his plans for a radical shake-up of the NHS and these plans have now been presented to parliament and are undergoing consultation. The prime minster David Cameron has contended that “fundamental changes" are needed to raise standards in Britain to the levels in other systems in Europe, whilst the leader of the opposition Ed Miliband has said that the health policy has "taken the national out of the national health service".

The full contents of this edition, as well as their contributors, are as follows:

• Commentary: Free Radicals? – Helen Disney, chief executive of the Stockholm Network;
  
• NHS Commissioning: A Better Way Forward – James Gubb, director of the Civitas Health Unit;
  
• Drug Pricing Reforms: A Switch to Value-Based Pricing – Paul Healy, senior researcher of the Stockholm Network;
  
• New Public Health White Paper for England: Lessons for National Public Health Systems, or Things to Avoid? - Dr John Middleton, vice-president of UK Faculty of Public Health;
  
• Stockholm Network Publication – Sharing the Burden: Could risk-sharing change the way we pay for healthcare?;
  
• Stockholm Network Event – Patient Safety and Comfort: The challenges of switching medicines.
  

This new issue of Know IP focuses on the issue of standardisation with an update on standards, competition and innovation in Europe. It also features a piece by Dalindyebo Shabalala, assistant professor of international economic law at Maastricht University about the uncertain future of IP in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations.

The full contents of the newsletter are as follows:

• Commentary: Should we abandon copyright protection over the web? – Dr Meir Pugatch;
  

• Topic of the Month: Standardising the standardisation process: An update on standards, competition and innovation in Europe – Rachel Chu;
  

• Experts’ Corner: The UNFCCC negotiations: The uncertain future of IP – Dalindyebo Shabalala;
  

• Views: A note on internet piracy: The need for coordinated action – Paul Healy;
  

• New and Notable: Patents and clean energy: bridging the gap between evidence and policy: Final report – the United Nations Environmental Programme, the European Patent Office and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development;
  

• Event: The Intellectual Property Academy: Inaugural meeting in Turkey;
  

• Newsflashes: Top stories in the world of IP and Competition.

  This was published by the Stockholm Network in January 2011.
  

The use of standards in high technology sectors, such as in the ICT and network industries, has facilitated a new level of dynamism and innovation in technological development. Indeed, the acceleration in technology associated with the use of standardisation has impacted on the entire industry, at once enabling and driving companies to keep up with the pace of technological change.

As a previous Stockholm Network briefing paper on standards discussed, the current standardisation process relies on a range of channels to establish standards, whether it be through a dominant product or protocol; a formal national or regional standard-setting organisation (SSO); or an informal industry consortium. As technology intensifies, the range and the number of channels or actors involved in standardisation are expanding. In particular, more non-traditional entities, including international fora and consortia, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), are producing widely implemented specifications. In addition, there is greater demand for accessing standards among different implementers or end-users, including SMEs.

This briefing paper will discuss the impact of the changing environment for standardisation, particularly in Europe, and assess four new proposals for adapting the existing framework for standard setting in the EU.

This edition’s leading article is by David Smith, economics editor of the Sunday Times, who looks at the vexed issue of public sector cuts and asks what the plans of the UK coalition government mean for the future of Britain’s economy. While he acknowledges the challenges faced by both the government and the British economy in finding savings as well as weathering the knock-on effects of the cuts, he ends with a cautiously optimistic view that Britain is resilient enough to deal with the pain.

In a related vein, our book review takes a look at Anatole Kaletsky’s new publication Capitalism 4.0 about what the next evolution of the global market economy will bring. The book looks at the various stages in the development of capitalism and makes some tentative predictions and comments about what might lie ahead in a post-crisis world. Our think tank profiles include a look at the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), as well as a profile of the influential M.E.S.A 10 in Slovakia and a fascinating look at the origins of the Civic Institute, which grew out of dissident opposition to communism to become one of the Czech Republic’s most respected policy institutions.

Last but by no means least we highlight aspects of the Stockholm Network’s own work. Our spotlight provides an extract from a forthcoming experts’ series paper on the 3rd stage of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, while elsewhere Paul Healy provides a taster of our new work programme on internet piracy.

Risk-sharing is a relatively new concept in the field of healthcare policy. As such, it is subject to confusion and misunderstanding, not only in terms of terminology but also in terms of substance. Different countries adopt and apply different forms of risk-sharing models and mechanisms. It is because of this confusion that the Stockholm Network is now seeking to demystify the concept of risk-sharing and to explore it in a more systematic way.

Accordingly, this paper examines and compares risk-sharing schemes in the following five countries: Australia, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

It concludes that there is, as yet, no gold standard for risk-sharing agreements, nor is there ever likely to be one. Risk-sharing agreements should reflect a true commitment to serve the needs of patients, to allow for greater individual choice, while securing the most effective methods of treatments. This means that the risk may be at the expense of payers, or manufacturers or both - but never at the expense of patients.


This was published by the Stockholm Network in November 2010.

The Stockholm Network Bi-Annual Review 2008-10 reflects the work of the Stockholm Network over the last two years. Included in the report is a full list of our activities, publications and members, as well as pages that highlight our online expansion.

This was published by the Stockholm Network in September 2010.

This is the fourteenth edition of Climate of Opinion. Our last issue focused on the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and, given the perceived failure of this conference, it is now important to take stock of established policies and their long-term prospects for global climate mitigation. The aim of this edition is to provide readers with a snapshot of where some of these programmes stand and what their prospects are for playing an increased role in climate change mitigation.

The contents of this issue and the contributors are as follows:

• Commentary: Life after Copenhagen by Helen Disney and Meir Pugatch, respectively CEO and director of research of the Stockholm Network.
  
• Government failure and the EU ETS: What prospects for phase 3? by Andres Jonathan Drew, research associate for the Center for Aviation and the Environment at Manchester Metropolitan University.
  
• Linking trade and climate regimes by Mehdi Abbas, economist at the University of Grenoble, France.
  
• Green Investing: what is green investing and how can it help combat climate change by Nick Green, author of The Green Investing Handbook.

This was published by the Stockholm Network in September 2010.