Failure to back AstraZeneca plant would be ‘tragic’

A recently departed senior executive at AstraZeneca and former right-hand man to Sir Pascal Soriot has said it would be “tragic” if the government did not follow through on a commitment to support a planned £450 million investment in a vaccine manufacturing facility in northwest England.

A report this week suggested that the Treasury had sought to cut the amount of state support for the project to £40 million, below the figure of at least £65 million that Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, is understood to have offered verbally.

AstraZeneca’s investment to expand its nasal flu vaccines plant in Speke, including a separate £200 million expansion of its global research and development in Cambridge, were hailed by Hunt during his budget speech in March.

Sir Mene Pangalos, who stepped down that month as executive vice-president for AstraZeneca’s biopharmaceuticals research and development, after 14 years at the company, said the new Speke facility would “preserve jobs and generate further investment in UK science in the northwest and beyond”. He warned there was “intense” competition around the world for investment from multinational drugs companies.

“The government needs to be encouraging R&D and capital investment in the UK not making it difficult. This means meeting commitments, adopting innovation and make the UK environment attractive for business,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

Pangalos, 57, was a key figure in the national response to the pandemic as both an adviser to the government’s vaccine taskforce and while overseeing Vaxzevria, the Covid vaccine that AstraZeneca developed in partnership with the University of Oxford. He is on the boards of The Judge Business School, Cambridge University, and the Francis Crick Institute and has taken on various additional board advisory roles this year.

The Treasury said this week that it remained in “positive discussions” with AstraZeneca and that Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, received regular updates.

AstraZeneca, whose value on the London stock market surpassed £200 billion this week, declined to comment, but Soriot, 65, said last month that it was “absolutely ready to go” with its expansion in Speke and that the contract with the government “is going through the process. So hopefully we can conclude this quickly and get on with the investment itself.”

Maria Eagle, the Labour MP for Liverpool Garston, whose constituency includes AstraZeneca’s Speke site, is understood to be planning to hold a meeting with the government’s Office for Life Sciences next week in an attempt to secure the investment.

Andrew Griffith, the shadow science secretary, said this week that AstraZeneca’s plans to expand the vaccine plant in Speke was a “big boost for Britain and it would be wrong to put this British success story in jeopardy”.