BHTA: Building the parliamentary profile of the MedTech industry

Government Relations and Public Affairs

The Challenge

We were tasked by the British Healthcare Trades Association (BHTA), a trade body representing over 400 businesses across 12 industries in the Medical Technologies sector, to enhance the sector’s presence in Parliament and within the policy landscape at Westminster. Suppliers and manufacturers of essential medical equipment, crucial for both acute and social care settings, have been under particular pressure in recent years owing to major regulatory and financial changes in the MedTech space. Given BHTA’s strength in representing a broad base of SMEs, which form the backbone of medical supply in the UK, our mission was to raise the sector’s profile from a policy perspective and foster stronger connections with parliamentarians and key stakeholders.

Our Strategy

We put together a public affairs programme designed to build an initial pool of parliamentary ‘allies’ who are active in the MedTech policy space in order to better communicate the raft of policy solutions being offered by the sector to tackle current regulatory and financial barriers impacting both businesses and patients. We also worked closely with the BHTA on their headline Manifesto, an in-depth policy document outlining the sector’s priorities and proposed solutions. 

As key starting point to secure a parliamentary legacy for the Manifesto involved a flagship Parliamentary reception and Manifesto launch held in Westminster. Following this, we supported the BHTA with detailed briefings sent to Parliamentarians ahead of relevant debates, helped schedule standalone meetings, created briefing notes to civil servants with more policy proposals ahead of key stages in relevant legislative agendas. A key aspect of our strategy was leveraging the BHTA’s extensive membership base by facilitating constituency visits, where individual members could connect directly with their local MPs. These visits were designed to build stronger relationships between the BHTA and key MPs over the long term. 

The Result

The BHTA have become a readily recognised voice in Parliament and the MedTech policy space, being especially notable in their ability to communicate the interests of SMEs operating in the sector. The BHTA’s Parliamentary Manifesto launch was attended by over 50 MPs and featured keynote interventions from two Health and Shadow Health Ministers. Over the course of the following year, we further supported the BHTA with more than 15 individual meetings and 10 constituency visits. Our work drafting and circulating BHTA briefings to Parliamentarians for topical debates have resulted in BHTA member concerns being raised directly across both Houses of Parliament, including the BHTA being mentioned at least twice by name in Parliamentarian speeches.

To amplify the BHTA’s voice, we have supported on a number of national and trade media pieces often on technical issues. The BHTA has a code of conduct that industry is meant to abide by, and we have utilised this code to establish the BHTA as a thought leader in the field of MedTech. We’ve had 21 pieces featured in the trade press, and were featured in a front page story on the Financial Times regarding UKCA marks on medical devices.