2005 GSK Corporate Responsibility Report
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2005 GSK Corporate Responsibility Report Introduction 1 Introduction Page Our contribution to society 1 About this report 1 CEO and Chairman’s letter 3 Managing corporate responsibility 4 Why CR is important to GSK 4 CR governance 4 Our CR principles 6 Stakeholder engagement 7 Stakeholder feedback 7 How we are responding 9 Government and external affairs 10 Membership of trade associations 10 US lobbying expenditures 10 Political donations 10 Our position on key issues 11 Patient advocacy 11 2 Access to medicine 3 Research 4 Ethical conduct 5 Employment practices 6 Human rights 7 Environment 8 Community investment 9 Data summary 1 1 GSK CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY REPORT 2005 Introduction Welcome to GSK’s Corporate Responsibility Report 2005. This report explains our approach to the wide range of social, ethical and environmental issues associated with our business and reports our performance in 2005. The full web-based report is available on www.gsk.com GSK is a research-based pharmaceutical company, with operations in 119 countries. We make prescription medicines, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and consumer healthcare products. Our business accounts for 6.3% of the world’s pharmaceutical market. We have strong positions in several therapeutic areas including anti-infectives, asthma, cancer, cardiovascular, depression, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and urology. For an overview of our business, see our Annual Report. OUR CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIETY This report explains our approach to the significant In the last 80 years, medicines and vaccines have corporate responsibility issues for our business, including: transformed millions of lives. They have helped to increase • Access to medicines – how we make our medicines life expectancy and lowered death rates from conditions accessible to poor patients in developed and developing such as heart disease, stroke and cancer. Medicines enable countries many people with chronic diseases to enjoy good health and lead full lives. In developed countries, healthcare • Research and development – how we maintain high advances mean most people are no longer at risk from ethical standards in our research and the publication of diseases such as polio and TB that were major threats less research results than a century ago. • Sales and marketing – how we maintain high ethical But continued research and development of new standards in the sales and marketing of our products medicines is vital. There are still many serious illnesses for It also covers our employment practices and approach to which there are few treatments or where treatments may human rights, our environmental performance and our be improved. community investment. Discovering and developing new medicines is expensive – the average cost is around £450 million and it takes an ABOUT THIS REPORT average of 15 years. Society now relies on the This report covers our corporate responsibility activity and pharmaceutical industry to fund most of this research, performance during 2005. It updates our last corporate indeed the majority of medicines used around the world responsibility report published in March 2004. Data relate have been developed by the pharmaceutical industry. to the calendar year 2005 (except where stated). GSK invested £3.1 billion in R&D in 2005 and employs The environmental data is collected from all of our 81 over 15,000 people. We have 149 prescription medicines pharmaceutical and consumer manufacturing sites, 5 and vaccines in clinical development. of our 8 biologicals manufacturing sites and 19 of 21 We believe that our business makes a valuable pharmaceutical and consumer R&D sites as well as all contribution to society by developing and marketing 7 distribution centres, all 6 major office locations and 7 medicines which improve people’s lives. However we of the smaller office and sales locations. We include data recognise that the research, development, manufacture for sites that were in operation for all or part of the year. and sale of medicines raise ethical issues for some Notes attached to the charts explain the scope and data stakeholders. We listen to these concerns and address collection process for each parameter in more detail. them where we can. Unless specified as being per unit of sales, figures are absolute numbers, i.e. total consumption of energy, water etc. Data in the environment, health and safety sections of this report are externally verified. 1 1 GSK CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY REPORT 2005 Introduction continued The scope of other data relates to our worldwide operations except where indicated. We use external guidelines and frameworks to inform our reporting where relevant. We do not base our report on the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines but we have included a GRI Index on our website to show which elements of the guidelines we cover and to aid comparison with other company reports. A number of changes have been made to this year’s report in response to feedback received during 2005. We have added a summary to give readers an overview of our approach to CR and the key issues for our business. Last year we organized the report according to our ten CR Principles. This year we are still reporting progress against our principles but we have reorganized some sections to make the report easier to navigate. Information on our marketing practices, previously contained in Products and Customers, has been incorporated into the Ethical Conduct section. Information previously contained in the Leadership and Advocacy section has been embedded through out the report, in particular in Government and External Affairs, Public Private Partnerships and Major Public Health Initiatives. For more information on our stakeholder engagement process see Stakeholder Engagement. 2 1 GSK CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY REPORT 2005 CEO and Chairman’s letter Corporate responsibility is fundamental to delivering our business goals. While the interests of shareholders remain paramount we also need to respond to stakeholder expectations by helping to address society’s healthcare challenges. We accept this challenge. Solving problems such as healthcare provision in the developing world is not a job for one company alone, however we do have an important contribution to make. Our access to medicine programmes for HIV/AIDS and our work with the World Health Organization to eradicate Lymphatic Filariasis (LF) are evidence of the efforts we are making. In 2005 we shipped 126 million preferentially priced Combivir and Epivir tablets to developing countries for treatment of HIV/AIDS and donated 136 million albendazole tablets for the prevention of LF. Through our public private partnerships we are developing the first pipeline of new tuberculosis treatments in 40 years and testing new vaccines and treatments against malaria, a disease which takes a devastating toll on the people of Africa. Corporate responsibility encompasses how we address and manage issues that arise from our business activities. Good performance on corporate responsibility supports our business strategy because it protects and enhances our relationships and reputation with doctors, governments and patients. GSK’s core business – the research and production of medicines – makes a valuable contribution to society. For many people our medicines are, quite literally, life-saving. But our satisfaction in what we do does not mean we can ignore issues associated with the research, manufacture and sale of medicines – from the publication of research results and marketing practices of pharmaceutical sales representatives, to the use of animals in research and the environmental impacts of our manufacturing processes. We are confident we have the right policies and programmes in place so that we operate to the highest standards. This report provides an update on the progress we have made against our ten corporate responsibility principles during 2005. Particular highlights include our new policies on the authorship of research articles, consumer advertising and patient advocacy, and our Clinical Trial Register that now contains results from over 2,000 GSK sponsored clinical trials. We seek views from a wide range of stakeholders and respond to their suggestions where possible. This report contains new information in a number of areas in response to feedback we have received (see Stakeholder Engagement). We hope this report provides the information you are seeking about corporate responsibility at GSK and we welcome your feedback. Sir Christopher Gent JP Garnier Chairman Chief Executive Officer 3 1 GSK CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY REPORT 2005 Managing corporate responsibility Corporate responsibility supports our business strategy by preparing us to meet future expectations, protecting our reputation and helping us to reduce business risk. So it is important that management of CR issues is integrated into our day-to-day operations. Our approach to CR is informed by frequent discussions with a range of stakeholders, including employees, shareholders, patients, doctors, governments and NGOs. For information on our engagement process and the feedback we have received, see Stakeholder Engagement and Government and External Affairs. WHY CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY CR GOVERNANCE IS IMPORTANT TO GSK GSK’s Corporate Responsibility Committee consists of non- To achieve its business goals, GSK focuses on a number of executive directors and provides a Board-level forum for business drivers: reviewing external issues with the potential to impact on GSK’s business and reputation. It provides high-level