The new Patent Box tax break, active from 1 April, has been welcomed by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries as a boost to innovation.

By setting a corporation tax rate of 10% on profits earned from patents and supplementary protection certificates, the Patent Box is expected to strengthen life science R&D in the UK.

The tax break, which extends to royalty and milestone payments, comes together with the introduction of a special 10% rate of R&D tax credits.

The special 10% tax rate is a major cut from the current corporation tax rate of 23%, which falls to 21% in 2015. It will be phased in over four years, with 60% available this year.

The Patent Box was developed by the Office for Life Sciences under the previous government as a way to strengthen the UK’s ‘knowledge economy’.

HM Treasury estimates that it will save UK businesses £1bn in tax, differentially rewarding innovation and encouraging investment in the UK’s R&D base.

Leading UK pharma company GSK, which was involved in the Treasury working group that advised on the policy, has since invested in a new £350m manufacturing facility in Cumbria.

Paul Belsman, National Head of Tax at accountancy consultant RSM Tenon, commented: “Combined with the research and developments tax credits system, this should provide strong fiscal incentive for companies and arguably attract inbound investment into the UK.”

The BioIndustry Association, which represents the UK biotechnology industry, has welcomed the opportunities within the Patent Box.

Steve Bates, CEO of the BIA, said the Patent Box would combine with “the improvements to R&D tax credits and reduction in corporation tax, the Government’s Strategy for UK Life Sciences and programmes such as the Biomedical Catalyst” to establish the UK as “a globally competitive location for life science companies”.

GPs fill less than half of the seats of boards of clinical commissioning groups, new research has found.

Clinical commissioning is at the heart of the Government’s NHS reforms but in some parts of the country GPs fill just a fifth of senior positions.

The study by Pulse Magazine found that on 44% of CCG boards fewer than half of members were doctors – mainly due to financial restraints.

Despite the findings, a spokesperson for the Department of Health said the statistics were “encouraging” with “twice as many GPs than managers on CCG governing bodies”.

The study of 1,325 positions across a hundred commissioning groups in England discovered that only 645 seats were occupied by practitioners. Managers and finance officers accounted for a further 267 positions, whilst there were 140 lay members and a further 65 nurses.

Surprisingly, hospital doctors were only allocated positions on 36 CCG managerial committees despite a requirement from the DH that each board should include a specialist. To date, research found, only 7 of the 36 positions have been filled.

Bob Senior, Head of Medical Services at RSM Tenon and Chair of the Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants, said that management allowances had influenced the number of clinicians included on CCG boards. “The economies of scale don’t work so smaller groups are having to use that money judiciously, which means you can’t have quite as big an involvement from GPs.”

“The main driver for Andrew Lansley’s reforms was to put budgets in the hands of frontline clinicians – if GP-led commissioning is to have any chance of succeeding, it must be led by GPs,” said Steve Nowottny, acting editor of Pulse.

Clinical commissioning groups will have to take full responsibility for the actions of commissioning support services, a legal expert has warned.

Bob Senior, Director of Medical Services at legal firm RSM Tenon, told delegates at the Commissioning Show how the Government wants CCGs to be fully accountable for all commissioning decisions.

He said CCGs cannot delegate responsibility and the “buck stops with you” if anything wrong were to happen during the commissioning of services.

CCGs were told how they would need to “do everything better for less money” when they take full control of health budgets next year and were warned to “look carefully at contract negotiations” to avoid any legal issues.

“You will have limited resources,” said Mr Senior. “Make sure you get something out of it that you want, not what they try to impose. This is your responsibility, your funding, your contract.”

Mr Senior also revealed how smaller CCGs are already struggling to deal with patient management costs and were cutting GP involvement as a result.

He told delegates how one commissioning group in the Midlands had reduced the number of doctors on its board from six to two to trim costs.

Developing commissioning groups, he said, are struggling to cope with the money allocated for patient management. “You can’t do everything you want in a small local CCG so as a result CCGs are generally becoming bigger than they originally hoped for,” he said. “The smaller CCGs are finding that £25 per head is too tight to do anything like the GP involvement they hoped for.”