AstraZeneca

Josh Fenton-Glynn Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

It is not entirely dependent on our AstraZeneca programme, and indeed, as I have already pointed out, the piece of work in which it was intending to invest—I hope I will get the science right—was changing the way in which it would create the nasal flu vaccine for children from an egg-based to a cell-based system. It has now decided not to do that, but to stick to the egg-based system. I think that if the chief scientific adviser or the chief medical officer has anything on which to update the House, he and/or she will do so.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

Despite AstraZeneca’s decision, the UK biotech industry almost doubled last year to £3.4 billion, but it was concentrated in just a few companies. Will the Minister commit to looking at some of the trial research rules to enable smaller companies to work better with NHS trusts so that start-ups and local firms can prosper?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is right: not only do we need to enable smaller companies to start up, but we need to enable them to grow to scale. Otherwise, the danger is that we develop the good idea, someone else ends up buying the intellectual property, and all the value disappears out the UK’s back door. When I met the husband-and-wife team who run BioNtech—they are amazing, not least in respect of some of the work they have done in developing immunotherapy, which is probably the stuff that saved my life when I had stage 4 cancer—they spoke warmly and glowingly about all the work that they want to do in the UK, alongside the work of AstraZeneca. As my hon. Friend says, we need to get small companies set up, to grow them, and to enable them to be world leaders like AstraZeneca.