Sorry mate, I know you and I agree about many things but you're way off the mark here.
How on earth do you propose that the UK tells Merck, Sanofi, pfizer, Roche, Bayer, BSM, Santen, Shire (Takeda), CSL Behring and every other pharma I can think of, what to do? What areas of research to do, what drug development to pursue, what prices to set.
Honestly, I sense your frustration, but it's a ludicrous suggestion. They are free, independent companies with HQ's which are not in the UK. They will focus their efforts where the profits are, and they spend billions in bringing new drugs to market. If the return is not there, they will simply not bother with that line of products and will focus on some alternative. (This is a critical problem with the development of new antibiotics, by the way.)
The UK is in a very fortunate position that we have a near-monopolistic buyer of drugs - the NHS. The NHS volumes compared to Spire and Bupa etc are enormous, which means the NHS gets to call the shots with the pharma businesses and to a much greater extent than in other countries, define it's own buying terms. Big pharma then has to decide does it comply, or miss out on effectively all UK volume if NICE does not approve use.
The upshot is we are best in class at negotiating supply contracts with the pharma businesses. It's not a perfect scenario by any means, but without a global initiative to nationalise all pharma companies - which is never happening, obviously - then I don't know what more can be done.