Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Fell and Lord Sharma

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support (a) vaccine manufacturing and (b) UK life sciences.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Alok Sharma)]

The Government are investing £93 million to set up the UK’s first dedicated Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre in Harwell. We are also investing £38 million in a rapid deployment facility, which will allow vaccine manufacturing at scale to commence from later this year.

[Simon Fell]

The Government have stated that they are interested in creating a sovereign manufacturing capability in the north. An opportunity exists in Ulverston in my constituency to build a bioscience cluster, with deep collaboration with local universities. Using this site for therapeutic vaccine manufacturing would enable partnership with GlaxoSmithKline, which is already based in Furness, and it would preserve and create local jobs and skills, and be a great result for the north and the UK as a whole. Would my right hon. Friend meet the key partners to this project to see whether we might be able to take it forward?

[Alok Sharma]

I want to confirm that the Government of course continue to consider the options to ensure that we have sufficient vaccine manufacturing capacity in the UK. I will ask the vaccine taskforce to follow up on that issue with my hon. Friend.