Drugmakers will be offered fast-tracked approvals for innovative medicines in the UK as ministers seek to build on the country's world-leading approval of a Covid vaccine and attract life sciences companies to invest post-Brexit.

The UK's medicines regulator will become independent of EU pharmaceutical rulemaking when Britain quits the European Medicines Agency at the end of the year, which means companies will need to apply separately to register drugs.

With ministers eager to try to refashion the UK as a post-Brexit hub for global life sciences, companies with drugs that promise to treat unmet medical needs will be offered help through the development process, including manufacturing, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Under the so-called Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway, companies are set to be offered the same rolling review of data that speeded approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine ahead of the rest of the world.

Here is more from Sarah Neville at the FT, via J.