Merck's decision to pull plug on £1bn investment is a warning that the government must heed

Compare and contrast. Here is the opening line in the government's response to news that the US pharmaceutical company Merck is scrapping its £1bn research centre in King's Cross, London, because it thinks the UK is not an internationally competitive venue.

- Nils Pratley

Compare and contrast. Here is the opening line in the government's response to news that the US pharmaceutical company Merck is scrapping its £1bn research centre in King's Cross, London, because it thinks the UK is not an internationally competitive venue. Whistling cheerfully, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology managed to claim: "The UK has become the most attractive place to invest in the world."

And here is Sir John Bell, a former regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford and all-round grand guru of life sciences in the UK. He told Radio 4 he had spoken to several chief executives of large pharmaceutical 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".

Who to believe? Frankly, the government's boast is absurd. As anybody who follows the pharma sector knows, the big multinational firms are all obsessing over precisely the issues that were identified by Bell.