On Jim's story, from The Times:
The Conservative Party accepted a £50,000 donation from a pharmaceutical boss involved in price gouging the NHS, The Times can report.
Amit Patel, who accepted a five-year ban last week from standing as a director for breaking competition law, donated the money during the June 2017 general election campaign led by Theresa May. The donation was made a year after The Times named Auden Mckenzie, the company Mr Patel had founded, as being among several businesses that had hugely increased the prices of old drugs.
The companies had been able to do so by exploiting a loophole in NHS pricing rules that meant drugs were no longer subject to a profit cap if they were “debranded” and sold under a generic name.

This form of price-gouging is common, and a last chance for the drug companies to make money from their drug research.
The drugs had been 'debranded' which means that their patents had expired. A more savvy government, or competitor business, could have 'reverse engineered' the drugs and competed on price, saving the NHS a large sum. If you're the sole provider of a specific drug then you have a monopoly. Once the drug is a 'generic' then the action of the free market comes into play, and the business that can provide a (suitably tested) version of the same drug at a better price will become the main supplier.

For a fuller treatment of this scam see Prescriber