Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether she plans to take steps increase the UK’s fill and finish manufacturing capacity.

Fill-finish capacity is crucial to the UK’s health resilience. Since the pandemic the government has invested over £395 million to scale up our manufacturing capabilities, including a partnership with Wockhardt to successfully fill-finish the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Last year the Government launched the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund to support a wide range of life sciences manufacturing investments, such as the £151 million project by Pharmaron that includes expansion of their fill-finish capabilities.

There has also been significant recent private investment, such as Thermo Fisher Scientific’s £70 million expansion to provide sterile formulation and fill-finish for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.