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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what additional manufacturing capacity there is in the UK for manufacturing a vaccine for covid-19 once one is developed.

The Vaccines Taskforce is working with the BioIndustry Association Taskforce to review existing domestic capability to manufacture vaccines, in response to Covid-19. The Taskforce is also reviewing options for increasing this capacity. The Business Secretary recently announced that the government will accelerate building the UK’s first Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, which is based at Harwell in Oxfordshire. The government will invest up to a further £93 million in the Centre, ensuring that it opens in summer 2021 – a full 12 months ahead of schedule. The Centre – which is already under construction – will have capacity to produce enough vaccine doses to serve the entire UK population in as little as 6 months. While the Centre is being built, the government will establish a rapid deployment facility thanks to a further investment of £38 million to begin coronavirus vaccine manufacturing at scale from this summer. This facility will support efforts to ensure a vaccine is widely available to the public as soon as possible.