With NHS budgets under pressure and medicine prices inexorably going up, something had to give.

Nevertheless, the decision by some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms this summer to challenge public sector powers to limit drug bills in the High Court still raised eyebrows.

The action brought by trade body the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) divided the sector, with Britain’s two largest drug makers, FTSE 100 giants GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, distancing themselves from a move driven by overseas conglomerates.

At a time when the Government has been working to boost the £63bn life sciences sector, legal action was seen by some in the industry as reckless. For them, the backdrop of Brexit and the sector’s special pleading for continued close integration between the UK’s medicines regulation and the EU’s compounded the miscalculation.

However, the bitterness between industry and the NHS became all too apparent yesterday, as court papers seen by The Sunday Telegraph revealed the NHS had attacked the drug makers’ claims as “unarguable” and “makeweight”. The dispute surrounds powers given to the NHS that allow it to ration medicines that are expected to cost more than £20m in any of their first three years of use. Previously they would have been automatically funded if approved by health costs agency Nice. Drug firms argue cutting-edge treatments, including gene and immune system boosting therapies, justify high prices.