Travel management for life sciences

A published code with cash limits in it. The ABPI Code of Practice 2024, administered by the PMCPA, limits the subsistence a company may provide to a health professional or other relevant decision maker to £75 per person excluding VAT and gratuities (clause 10.8), and constrains the venue and the reasons for holding an event overseas. Ordinary business travel has no equivalent, which is why a general travel policy does not survive contact with a life-sciences programme.

“The cost of any subsistence (food and drink) provided must not exceed £75 per person, excluding VAT and gratuities.” — clause 10.8 of the 2024 Code. It is a cash figure, which is unusual in this kind of code and is precisely what makes it something a booking tool can enforce at the point of booking rather than an expenses team discovering afterwards.

Not for meetings within scope of the Code. clause 10.1 requires that “the venue must be appropriate and conducive to the main purpose of the event/meeting; lavish, extravagant or deluxe venues must not be used”, and that hospitality is “of secondary consideration and must be appropriate and not out of proportion to the occasion”. The Code also puts it plainly: it should be the programme that attracts delegates, not the hospitality or the venue. A hotel category rule in a booking tool is how that becomes operational rather than aspirational.

The supplementary guidance to clause 10.1 requires “valid and cogent reasons” for events involving UK health professionals at overseas venues — broadly, that most invitees are from outside the UK, or that it makes greater logistical sense to hold it outside the UK given where the relevant resources are. The Code also asks that consideration be given to technology to avoid travel outside the UK altogether.

No. The obligation is the company's. What a supplier can do is make compliance the default: configure the venue and rate rules in the booking tool, flag a booking that breaches them before it is made rather than after, and produce the audit record. Compliance stays with you, the same way duty of care does.

Three things. Whether the booking tool can enforce a per-person subsistence cap and a venue category rule at the point of booking rather than flagging them in a report. What the audit record looks like, and whether it survives the end of the contract. And whether their consultants have worked on programmes with an external code before, because the failure mode is not malice, it is a consultant helpfully upgrading something.

It is a self-regulatory code administered by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority, not a statute. That does not make it optional for the companies within its scope: breaches are published, and the reputational consequence of a published ruling is the enforcement mechanism. Whether and how it applies to your organisation is a question for your compliance function, not for this site.

Scope is a question for your compliance team and depends on what you do and which code or codes you are within. What is true regardless is that if any code with cash limits and venue rules applies to you, it changes the travel requirement in the same structural way, and the same three supplier questions above are the ones to ask.