AstraZeneca

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Lady’s first point was on the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing and access, which is reduced to an acronym that is not really an acronym: VPAG. This is, as it says on the tin, a voluntary agreement between Government, the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS, which is designed specifically to ensure that we protect the NHS’s medicines budget. It is voluntary, and AstraZeneca has always been a party to it on a voluntary basis. I am not sure that is the problem the hon. Lady thinks it is—although, if she has further evidence, I would be happy to speak to her.

I think she is also referring to the rejection by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence of a breast cancer drug. This is the first time in six years that a breast cancer drug has been rejected by NICE, and it is obviously concerning for everybody who wants to be able to use these drugs. However, we have an independent and much-respected system in the UK. I stand by that independence; I am not going to undermine it.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

May I say in the gentlest possible way to my hon. Friend the Minister that losing investment in Merseyside and the north-west is not compensated for by investment in the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, particularly as some years ago we lost Diamond Light Source from Daresbury? I would also like to ask him a question on a deeper issue beyond the normal party political dance: it’s their fault. it’s not, or whatever. When Kate Bingham, the heroine of covid and developing vaccines, finished she made excoriating comments about our civil servants and their ability to understand science and biological sciences. What is the Minister doing to improve that situation, so that distinguished people like Kate Bingham do not say that officials in the civil service treat this huge industry with suspicion and contempt?

[Chris Bryant]

If I might just refer to the first comment first, I am the Member for Rhondda and Ogmore, so I fully understand that investment in one part of the country is obviously great for that part of the country, but it does not necessarily mean that every part of the country is rising with everybody else. Trying to make sure that economic investment spreads across the whole of the United Kingdom, including in the north-west, the north-east and in the south Wales valleys, is a really important part of our historic mission.

On my hon. Friend’s other point, AstraZeneca complained about the length of time all of this has taken. As I say, it started in 2020 and it was only in 2024 that the first announcement was made—as I understand it, by a text message from the then Chancellor of the Exchequer to the chief executive of AstraZeneca. We might need to learn better ways of informing our decisions about science.