‘Great news, Prime Minister, Astra-Zeneca has decided to site a new £320 million factory on Mersey-side. Your vision of the UK as a science superpower is becoming a reality.’ What a moment that would be for a Downing Street intern in search of the positive for an otherwise grim morning briefing; almost up there with ‘Great news, Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has joined a Trappist monastery’.
But no, AstraZeneca decided some time ago to put its next factory in Dublin. This is the pharma multinational that was a corporate hero of the Covid vaccine rollout and is a descendant of ICI, Britain’s greatest 20th-century science company; the very model of the kind of investor Rishi Sunak hopes to attract. But last week its boss Pascal Soriot explained why he’s not expanding his UK footprint, which include a research centre in Cambridge and factories in the north-west: because of a ‘discouraging’ tax regime, exacerbated by a notionally voluntary scheme known as VPAS that will force manufacturers of branded medicines to refund 26.5
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