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Pharmaceuticals companies were told to make fewer drugs for the sake of the environment, in new draft guidelines for businesses in the Government’s latest net zero drive.
The suggestion was among a vast array of proposals which Britain’s biggest businesses have been told to consider as they are ordered to publish lengthy reports every year to show how they plan to meet their net zero targets.
The Government said that it had removed this recommendation hours before the guidelines were published, following questions from The Telegraph.
The draft guidance said pharma companies should “reduce the overall quantity of products manufactured and purchased” as part of efforts to explore “sustainable alternatives” to drugs with high emissions.
Britain’s pharmaceutical industry employs 66,000 people, with a turnover of £40.8bn and exports of £26.1bn, according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI).
Other recommendations in the Treasury report, which have not been redacted, include advice to clothing companies to reduce the amount of cotton used in t-shirts or replace traditional textiles with lab-grown fabrics.
The guidance was published by the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT), which was established by HM Treasury and set up following the COP26 environmental conference in Glasgow.
The TPT’s aim is to provide investors with comparable reports on every company’s plans so they can decide where they want to put their money.
The TPT’s aim is to provide investors with comparable reports on every company’s plans so they can decide where they want to put their money.
Ben Caldecott, co-head of the Transition Plan Taskforce’s secretariat, said: “In contrast with excluding companies from the capital markets just because they generate carbon pollution, it is the opposite - it is saying these are exactly the companies that need capital so they can become more sustainable and successful businesses.
“If we starve them of capital, that is not going to serve anyone’s objectives. It will just create a market opportunity for large polluting companies in China, and what is the point of that?”
He said pressure to divest from polluting companies will not be enough to cut emissions, when instead those businesses with high emissions need more cash to clean up their act.
Mr Caldecott added: “We need to provide the capital, the financial services, so they can change and adapt.
“Most of the change we need to see is going to come from those companies, not just from building lots of wind farms, which is very important but no number of wind farms will get us to net zero.”
Other suggestions by the TPT included recommending engineering companies to publish the number of fossil fuel projects on their order books compared with the number of renewable energy schemes they are working on.