LONDON (Reuters) – Pharma giant AstraZeneca urged Britain to improve the environment for businesses in order to drive investment, days after it scrapped plans to build a 450 million pound ($558.86 million) vaccine plant because of a cut to government support.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to stimulate growth in Britain’s stagnant economy by attracting business investment was given a painful reality check last week when AstraZeneca, the country’s most valuable listed company, cancelled the expansion of an existing facility in Speke, northern England.
The chief executive of AstraZeneca said Britain needed to offer better incentives to secure investment, highlighting the “very competitive world” in which companies operate.
“The UK needs to continue working on improving the investment environment to attract investment,” CEO Pascal Soriot told reporters as the company announced annual results on Thursday.
He said AstraZeneca was offered “substantial support” by other governments, like Singapore, to build facilities.
For its part, Britain blamed AstraZeneca for scaling back its research and development plans for the now cancelled expansion, which would have made next-generation vaccines. As a result, the finance ministry cut the support on offer.
AstraZeneca said it remained “very committed” to Britain despite pulling the Speke plan and is spending 200 million pounds expanding its Cambridge site.
“We as a company continue to work very closely with the government to support the life sciences strategy to try and improve the overall environment, to attract investment,” Soriot said.
He said the lower level of government support meant the business case for Speke no longer worked. Science department minister Chris Bryant said earlier this week the difference in funding between what was originally offered and the final proposal was “remarkably small”.
($1 = 0.8052 pounds)
(Reporting by Maggie Fick and Pushkala Aripaka, Writing by Sarah Young; editing by William James)
