Drug tycoon in £50,000 Labour link

BRIAN BRADY WESTMINSTER EDITOR
bdbrady@scotlandonsunday.com

THE boss of Britain’s biggest vaccines company made a £50,000 donation to Labour two months after winning a £17m NHS contract, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

Dr Paul Drayson, chief executive of bio-science business Powderject, handed over his donation after winning a deal to provide all the UK’s anti-TB jabs at a price four times that of the previous contract.

The cash - from a family fortune estimated at over £100m - was donated shortly after Blair’s election victory last June.

Drayson, 41, has made a string of statements in recent months praising the Prime Minister and his government, including a defence of Blair’s refusal to reveal whether his baby son Leo had had the controversial MMR vaccination.

Details of the financial backing from a Labour ‘cheerleader’ whose firm competes for lucrative government contracts last night intensified the row over the party’s links with big business.

Downing Street is already trying to limit the damage from last weekend’s revelation that Blair endorsed a Caribbean-based company’s bid to take over the Romanian steel industry after its owner donated £125,000 to party funds.

A spokesman for Powderject last night confirmed that Drayson was a Labour party member who had given the money as an individual donor. The spokesman insisted it was "completely unrelated" to Powderject’s dealings with the government.

The spokesman said Drayson met politicians, including ministers, "all the time" in his capacity as boss of both Powderject and his trade organisation, the BioIndustry Association.

But shadow health secretary Liam Fox, who complained about the cost of the BCG deal when it was announced, challenged the government to lay bare full details of its contacts with Drayson.

He said: "Any suggestion that the NHS is being overcharged for vaccines would naturally be a cause for concern at any time.

"Given recent events, in particular the scandal surrounding Labour donors, it clearly becomes a cause for heightened public anxiety. The questions raised must be dealt with speedily and transparently."

Multimillionaire Drayson has made a string of statements in recent months praising the Prime Minister and his government - although he has never revealed the extent of his support for the Labour party.

He was the foremost of six senior industrial scientists who wrote to the Financial Times newspaper endorsing the government’s record in the crucial run-in to the last election.

Last month Drayson condemned critics who complained about the Prime Minister’s refusal to say whether his baby son Leo had had the MMR vaccination, in the face of fears that it could cause autism.

"The way the issue came up regarding the Prime Minister was very unfair," said Drayson, whose firm does not produce the triple vaccine. "There is a limit. It is a matter of personal choice whether you talk about your family."

Powderject, the sixth largest vaccine company in the world, also produces the leading flu vaccine, Fluvirin, vaccines against yellow fever and tetanus, and the Diamorphine pain-killer.

Drayson also congratulated the Department of Health on its vaccination programme during the flu epidemic last winter. Blair named Powderject’s needle-free vaccination technology as a ‘Millennium product’ under a prestigious awards scheme designed to showcase British initiatives at the start of the new century.

The Powderject spokesman added: "Paul is a well-known supporter of the Labour Party. He is very open about that. He is a member, he was also quoted in the manifesto, but all of that is in a personal capacity."

The decision last March to award Powderject the £8.5m a year contract over two years to provide the BCG jabs against TB provoked furious complaints that the government had not got value for money.

Ministers had been forced to halt the BCG schools immunisation programme in 1999 after their supplier, Medeva, ran into production problems.

Powderject later took over the Merseyside-based company, renaming it Evans Vaccines. The Department of Health then negotiated the new BCG contract with Powderject, but at a price more than four times the original £2m a year.

The Powderject spokesman said last night: "We are the only licensed supplier of the TB vaccine in the UK. We won that contract in an open manner and we announced it."

Powderject is now believed to be helping the government strengthen Britain’s defences against bio-terrorism in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11. Evans Vaccines has restarted production of a smallpox vaccine and stepped up output of an anthrax vaccine it already supplies to the Ministry of Defence.

Drayson began his business career at Rover, then moved to an offshoot of the sweets company Trebor, which he later sold at a large profit after leading a management buy-out . He co-founded Powderject to sell a needle-free injection system, but the company’s main focus is now the vaccines business.