Big pharma investment in UK 'at risk' after Merck's £1bn exit

Sir John Bell, a prominent scientist who brought business and government together during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, has warned that other big pharmaceutical companies will stop investing in the UK after the US drugmaker MSD's decision to scrap its planned £1bn London research centre.

- Julia Kollewe

Bell, a former regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, told Today on BBC Radio 4 that he had spoken to several chief executives of large companies in the past six months, "and they're all in the same space, and that is, they're not going to do any more investing in the UK".

He made the comments a day after MSD, known as Merck in the US, said it would pull out of research & development (R&D) in the UK with the loss of 125 science jobs, citing the UK's lack of progress on life science investment and the "overall undervaluation of innovative medicines and vaccines by successive UK governments".