Gordon Marsden
Main Page: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)AstraZeneca (Pfizer Bid)
Gordon Marsden ExcerptsUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Vince Cable
I am sure that it is a vote of confidence, but I am equally sure that the companies are motivated by hard-headed commercial considerations. We should therefore be motivated by the hard-headed considerations of the national interest.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State refers to Pfizer’s assurances, but he must remember that Pfizer has pulled jobs and investment out of Sandwich not once, but twice: first in manufacturing and now in R and D. The chief executive of Pfizer has said on the record that he views the UK as
“an attractive place to do science and manufacturing.”
However, after the way that it has treated the workers in Sandwich, is that not a bit like Dracula saying, “I like the look of that blood bank”?
Vince Cable
I am aware that there were very sore feelings about the redundancies at Sandwich. The Government had to mobilise a taskforce to rescue the situation on the ground and it is now quite a successful part of the UK. We accept that there was hurt, but that is not unique to Pfizer. As I said in an earlier answer, a roughly equal number of redundancies has been made by both companies. That is not because of their corporate philosophies, but because their patents have run out and they have not developed the pipeline of new projects that is necessary to sustain growing employment.