Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to increase the UK’s long-term ability to manufacture vaccines.

The Government has invested over £300 million to secure and scale up the UK’s manufacturing capabilities to be able to respond to the pandemic, including:

a) Facilities that have come online:

• £4.7 million for skills training through the Advanced Therapies Skills Training Network, which will be delivered through both virtual and physical centres;
• £8.75 million for the set-up of the rapid deployment facility at Oxford Biomedica in Oxfordshire;
• £65.5 million for the early manufacture of the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine; and
• Funding for fill and finish capability through a contract with Wockhardt in Wrexham, North Wales. The Government have recently extended Wockhardt’s contract from 18 to 24 months, to ensure that we have uninterrupted fill and finish capability into 2022.

b) Facilities that will come online later this year, to help provide longer term UK capacity:

• £93 million to accelerate the completion and expanded role of the Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Oxfordshire; and
• £127 million for the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult in Braintree, Essex.

In addition to the above, we have also funded the expansion of the Valneva factory in Livingston, Scotland.