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Government and external affairs

The pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated and these regulations can have a significant impact on our business. It is therefore important that we engage in debate on legislation and seek to influence policy decisions that affect GSK. In fact, as a major multinational corporation we are often approached by governments to give our views, along with other stakeholders such as NGOs.

Our size and global reach give us access to governments and policy makers. We recognise that we need to use this access responsibly to benefit patients and our business. Our public policy work is governed by our External affairs Code of Conduct, and backed up by factual research and analysis. GSK’s External Affairs teams monitor changes and proposed reforms to legislation and meet regularly with government officials to explain our views on a range of public policy issues.

Lobbying on issues affecting the whole pharmaceutical industry is sometimes conducted through trade associations. We may also hire professional lobbyists to support our public policy work.

GSK believes that, where legally and culturally appropriate, political donations are a legitimate way of supporting the political process. We have a political donations policy that governs our activity in this area. Information on donations is given both in this report and in the Annual Report and Accounts.

In addition, we have policies governing our interactions with other important stakeholders such as patient advocacy groups.

This section describes:

• Our membership of trade organisations
• Political donations
• US lobbying expenditure in 2005
• Our position on key issues
• Our approach to patient advocacy and the patient groups we supported in 2005.

GSK was one of eight companies given a ‘systematic’ rating by SustainAbility and WWF in their survey of how 100 leading companies report on their lobbying practices. This was the highest rating awarded. A company received a ‘systematic’ rating if “Coverage of lobbying indicates that systems exist to actively manage and disclose lobbying and public policy activities. The company likely discusses policy positions on several material issues in some depth. However, approach to lobbying is still not fully integrated with company values, business principles and core business decision-making.”

More background information on our approach to public policy is available at External affairs.

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