Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what support the Government is providing to projects working on a covid-19 vaccine.
Answered by Amanda Solloway
The Government is supporting efforts to rapidly develop a coronavirus vaccine as soon as possible. This includes reviewing regulations and scaling up manufacturing, so that when a vaccine becomes available, it can be produced quickly and in large quantities. To date the UK government has secured early access to 340 million vaccines doses through agreements with six separate vaccine developers. This includes agreements with University of Oxford’s vaccine being developed with AstraZeneca and agreements with BioNTech/Pfizer alliance, Valneva, Novavax, Janssen and GSK/Sanofi Pasteur.
The Government has also taken action to ensure the country’s vaccine manufacturing capabilities are scaled up, so that if a vaccine is found to be effective it can be made available to the public as quickly as possible. The Government has announced a £93 million investment to open the UK’s first dedicated Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, and an additional £38 million for a virtual centre of existing capability, in order to begin manufacturing at scale in the near future.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent meetings he has had with representatives of the exhibition industry on the effect on that sector of the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Paul Scully
Ministers and officials have regular engagement with a large number of businesses, representative organisations, and trade unions, including those from the Exhibition and Events sector, specifically for the purposes of COVID-19.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) publishes details of ministers’ meetings with external organisations on a quarterly basis, available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/beis-ministerial-gifts-hospitality-travel-and-meetings.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that (a) Citizens Advice and (B) local branches of that organisation are able to access funding announced for charities due to the covid-19 outbreak in April 2020.
Answered by Paul Scully
Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland, the national charities, will receive additional funding from the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) fund announced on 8 April. Both conduct vital work to support individuals manage the covid-19 outbreak, particularly by helping them find appropriate support. The additional funding will reflect this.
On 20 May, my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced that £200 million from the VCSE fund will be allocated for local charities to be administered by the National Lottery Community Fund. As local Citizens Advice are all individual charities, and not funded by central government, they will have the opportunity to apply to that funding pot where they meet the objectives.