Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps his Department has taken to help support life sciences manufacturing in the North East.

In April 2021, the Government launched the £20m Medicines and Diagnostics Manufacturing Transformation Fund (MDMTF). Five companies were awarded funding through the MDMTF, including Piramal Healthcare, which will undertake a facilities upgrade at their Morpeth site in Northumberland.

In March 2022, the Government launched the £60m successor Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF) to support businesses investing in life sciences manufacturing projects in the UK. This received many Expressions of Interest and approximately 5% were from companies in the North East. It is expected that the announcement of the first wave of successful applicants will take place in Autumn 2022.