Reportedly, the Chancellor is looking to reduce the £65 million that Hunt had committed to the manufacturing factory in Merseyside by twenty million pounds.
An expansion plan for an AstraZeneca vaccine production site in Merseyside that was estimated to cost £450 million has been dealt a blow after it was revealed that the government intends to reduce some of the financing for the initiative.
Following the fact that her predecessor, Jeremy Hunt, had promised the pharmaceutical giant £65 million, it is believed that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is contemplating lowering the amount of state funding that is designated for the plan by more than twenty million pounds.
According to a report by the Financial Times, the reduction is a component of a comprehensive evaluation of all investment decisions made by the administration that came before this one.
She has stated that the Conservative government “covered up” a gaping shortfall in public finances equal to twenty-two billion pounds, and Reeves is trying to reduce government spending in order to fill this gap.
Her decision to fund above-inflation public-sector pay recommendations in full was responsible for about half of the shortfall, which was £9.4 billion. This move reversed years of decreasing salaries and eliminated the possibility of strikes.
As a component of his budget, Hunt initially indicated in March his intention to grant government assistance for the expansion of the Speke facility, which is located close to Liverpool.
At this location, AstraZeneca already operates a facility that focusses on providing immunisations to children and employs a total of four hundred workers.
The decision to reduce funding by a third would be a blow to AstraZeneca, whose chief executive, Pascal Soriot, who is the highest-paid boss in the FTSE 100, stated last month that the company was “absolutely ready to go” with the initiative and hoped that the investment could be completed as swiftly as possible.
The government’s choice might result in the project moving to France, according to a Financial Times report.
“We are committed to making the United Kingdom one of the best places in the world to develop and manufacture new and innovative medicines,” said a spokeswoman for the Treasury. Regular updates are sent to the chancellor regarding this proposed investment in Speke, and we are now engaged in fruitful discussions with AstraZeneca to facilitate the delivery of this investment.
In recent years, AstraZeneca has made a greater push into the vaccination business. This is due to the fact that the company has developed a COVID vaccine in partnership with the University of Oxford, and three billion doses of this vaccine have been carried out all over the world.
A “surplus of available updated vaccines” that target new strains of the virus was the reason for the company’s decision to remove the vaccine from the market in the month of May that year.
The company’s stock market valuation reached £200 billion for the first time on Tuesday, following a 1% increase in the price of its shares.
When asked for a comment, AstraZeneca declined.