Big pharma will stop investing in UK, top scientist warns after Merck’s £1bn exit

Comments by former professor of medicine at Oxford follow scrapping of planned London research centre

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.

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 that they were all in the same space. And that is: they're not going to do any more investing in the UK."