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 support domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity during the covid-19 outbreak.

The Government continues to strongly support the vision set out in the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy to make the UK a top tier global hub for biomedical and clinical research, and medical innovation.

We recognise the importance of life sciences and medicines supply during this pandemic and the Governments recognition of this group as being key workers has ensured pharmaceutical manufacturing has continued throughout the outbreak. The Government is determined to protect lives and protect livelihoods.

Vaccine and therapeutics for Covid-19 are moving rapidly through clinical trials. Government is working closely with industry to assess UK manufacturing capability for a range of potential new vaccines. The type of capacity and the specific groups needed to take this further will be determined by the technology used to produce the vaccines and the type of vaccine produced.

We have also announced a further £93 million to accelerate the building of the new Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre so it can open in summer 2021, a year ahead of schedule.

While the centre is being built, the Government will establish a rapid deployment facility thanks to a further investment of £38m to begin manufacturing at scale from this summer.