Hamstrung by Tory ideologues

Jeremy Quin rightly argues that our national priority must be to roll-out the Oxford vaccine and this will require the ‘scaling up of its production’ if inoculation is to beat infection over the coming months (WSCT, January 7).

While only a conspiracy theorist or Covid denier would disagree, the fly in the ointment is that Conservative policy over the last 40 years has been to reduce this country’s productive capacity, in pharmaceuticals, as in practically everything else.

As a result, we are struggling to produce the volume of vaccine which the NHS is able to dispense.

As the regius professor for medicine at Oxford, John Bell, said in a recent interview with the Times, ‘The government has been completely disinterested in building onshore capacity for any of the life-sciences products... And it turns out that manufacturing is a strategic asset for health security when stuff gets tough.’ Just so.

Sadly, Horsham’s contribution to the UK’s pharmaceutical productive capacity disappeared when Novartis left the town. All we can do now is support the case for restoring national production and dispel the illusion that repeating ‘global Britain’ will somehow persuade the Indian government to reverse the recent order to its Serum Institute to retain all Oxford/AstraZeneca doses manufactured for India’s own use. Once again, the conclusion can only be that our brilliant scientists and NHS workers are hamstrung by the bone-headed Conservative ideologues set in authority over us. PAULCLARKE Queensway

Horsham