Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the report by the Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership Fulfilling the potential identified in the Government's Life Sciences Vision, published on 24 January, what assessment they have made of its findings that the UK has seen (1) a significant loss of traditional medicines manufacturing capacity over the last 25 years, (2) 7,000 jobs lost, and (3) a fall in production volumes of 29 per cent since 2009.

Life Sciences pharmaceutical manufacturing was responsible for approximately £20.1 billion worth of exports in 2021. This figure is based on a US dollar figure of $27.7 billion, using the 2021 OECD average conversion rate.

The official statistics from the Office for Life Sciences show that employment in core biopharmaceutical manufacturing employment declined between 2009 and 2019 but increased by 5% between 2019 and 2021. The Life Sciences Vision sets out an ambition to create a globally competitive environment for Life Science manufacturing investments. To help meet these ambitions, the Government launched the £60 million Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund in March 2022 to incentivise globally mobile manufacturing investments in the United Kingdom.