Don’t forget Ulverston – GSK must give UK pharma a helping hand

In March 2012, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, visited Ulverston in Cumbria. Accompanied by GSK chief executive, Andrew Witty, and assorted dignitaries, he announced a major expansion of the pharmaceutical giant’s local plant with the creation of 1,000 new jobs. Said Cameron: “This is a massive vote of confidence in the workforce at GSK and Ulverston. The fact that this business is going to invest half a billion pounds and creating jobs here and in Scotland is really good news for this business and really good news for Britain.”

Funnily enough, the current Prime Minister wasn’t on hand for a photo opportunity when the news broke. Boris Johnson did, though, visit a vaccine manufacturing plant on Teesside at the weekend and pose for the ubiquitous white-coat picture. On his trip, Johnson might have wondered why Northerners don’t always rush to embrace him, are not permanently wreathed in smiles. They can have a tendency to appear glum and quizzical. He may put that down, in breezy Boris fashion, to them being miserable gits – glass half-empty and all that. But if he stopped and thought, he could ask himself, why are they so wary, why do they see the glass as half-full?

It’s because they realise the glass is easily capable of containing nothing at all – that the ale may simply stop flowing. Banging on about “levelling up” falls on deaf ears if those you’re addressing are all too used to being let down.

There’s a familiar pattern. I remember being taken as a child, also in the North, to see a helicopter. I’d never seen one before. It was carrying bigwigs from Ferranti who were coming to open state-of-the art, electronics-making premises. Subsequently, the building was abandoned, and then turned over to a coach-builders.

At Ulverston, PM and global CEO arrive, amid great fanfare. Then they disappear, back to London. The corporate boss gets his knighthood “for services to the economy and the UK pharmaceutical industry”. Witty retires. His replacement, Emma Walmsley, comes in and changes the direction of the company. First, Ulverston’s expansion is curtailed (in 2017, only five years after Cameron’s appearance); then GSK, which has had a factory on the site since 1948, says it is pulling out altogether. Walmsley, meanwhile, gets her damehood for, “services to the pharmaceutical industry and business.”

The citations are subtly different. His is for services to the UK pharma industry; hers is for services to the pharma industry. Her GSK is more international in outlook. Ulverston, it seems, does not fit into its plans.

Ulverston manufactures antibiotics and they have been sold to Sandoz for £350 million. Sandoz will transfer the making of those products to their location in Austria. This follows the announcement last year of a joint investment with the Austrian government of more than €150 million to strengthen the long-term competitiveness of its antibiotic manufacturing site. As a result, GSK is bringing to an end over 73 years of operations in Ulverston that at one time employed over 2,000 people.

While they’ve been aborting the £350 million Ulverston expansion and now shutting down, GSK has been building elsewhere, announcing a similar scale of investment, in similar technology, in their sites in the US and with a partner in South Korea. Johnson presumably knows this because Walmsley sits on his new “Build Back Better Council” aimed at helping the economy recover from the pandemic. His co-chair is the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and the new Business Secretary, Kwasi Karteng, and Trade Secretary, Liz Truss, also attend, along with business leaders including Dame Emma.

As well as the levelling up agenda, another key plank of government policy may also feature in their discussions. Among the reasons given for the Austrian grant to the Sandoz factory was that country’s desire to guarantee the long-term supply of antibiotics. The UK has an identical wish.

Even before the onset of Covid, there were reports of shortages of some medicines. Then, when the virus struck, there were concerns about lack of availability of various products, including personal protection equipment and even basic drugs. Stocks of paracetamol were running low because the countries that manufactured the treatment were keeping it back for their own needs.

So alarmed about the behaviour of the likes of China was the Prime Minister that he launched “Project Defend” to end our reliance on imports of medical supplies. It was part of a push to broaden our entire approach to national security. The Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, was put in charge.

It’s hard to see how the Ulverston closure conforms with Project Defend. What the factory produces is good enough for the Austrians, but not for the British.

There could be some good to emerge from another swing of the wrecking ball to our overall manufacturing base, to UK biomanufacturing, to our economic strength and to a hard-hit community. A new company, Lakes BioScience, wants to build an antibody manufacturing plant in Ulverston, on the land that was earmarked for the Cameron-Witty development. They would provide continued employment for 250 highly-skilled workers and would contribute to the UK’s national resilience in the manufacture of modern, complex medicines. They’ve got funding from Star Capital Partnership in London for a £350 million factory.

What they require is a contract to kickstart the project. GSK could do its bit and give something back to a town that has served it so well for so long, and award Lakes BioScience that order. Build Back Better will have meaning, Project Defend will receive a boost and the levelling up agenda will not appear so lacking. Who knows, it may assist Simon Fell, the area’s Conservative MP, elected in the “Blue Wall” surge, in retaining his seat at the next election.