PowderJect's controversial chief looks unlikely to shy away from the headlines

Business Profile: Paul Drayson is confident about the future – even if the past week's been dreadful

If Paul Drayson were to become a subject of BBC 1's My Worst Week programme, it would be last week that would figure. The value of his vaccines company, PowderJect Pharmaceuticals, slumped after it withdrew supplies of its tuberculosis jab and he found himself accused of delay in releasing the damaging news to the market.

In addition, he has found it difficult to shake off the fishy smell that has hung around PowderJect since it won a Government contract to supply the smallpox vaccine that will be used to protect us in the event of a bioterrorist attack. Mr Drayson is a Labour Party donor to the tune of £100,000.

He is also one of the UK biotech industry's most flamboyant characters, famous for his boyish good looks and long – if greying – hair as much as for the unusual manner in which he has moved PowderJect into the select band of profitable UK biotech companies.

"I've had better weeks," he says – not wearily, but as a means of winding up into an attack on cynicism and his treatment at the hands of the media.

"I can understand that it has been caused in part because I am a known supporter of the Labour Party. I'm not one of these people who believes in conspiracy theories, but I believe I have become a political football, and as a result of that accuracy has gone flying out of the window."

Mr Drayson is accused of holding back the likely scale of the problems with the BCG vaccine until spot checks on its potency forced its withdrawal 10 days ago. The problem had first surfaced in Ireland, where a single batch was recalled on 5 July. PowderJect's critics argue it could have updated the market then, or on 31 July, when the Irish authorities suspended its licence to sell the BCG.

In the event, it wasn't until 13 August, when the UK and Irish authorities concluded the problem was not just with one batch and PowderJect's supplies did not meet the required strength, that Mr Drayson first publicly revealed the problem. He says it was only on that day that the test results came through, prompting the recall of the whole product, which will wipe £5m from profits this year.

Speculation that the company has fallen foul of the Financial Services Authority for failing to pass timely information to the market does seem to be wide of the mark, but by Wednesday of last week, the company's broker, WestLB Panmure, was forced to put out an extraordinary blow-by-blow timetable of events to try to quell the furore.

Mr Drayson feels a hounded man, and pinpoints the Government smallpox contract award as the start of his woes. The £32m deal came within weeks of his second £50,000 donation to the Labour Party.

He says: "It was clear that because I am a supporter of the Labour party that has made the whole thing highly political, but the fact of the matter is that five companies were approached. The UK, along with the whole of Europe, has decided to use a European strain that goes back many years. PowderJect was the only company that could supply this strain in the time the Government wanted, which was extremely fast, and we were able to produce it at the most cost-effective price. We won that contract fair and square and to suggest otherwise is completely outrageous.

"People say I've given £50,000 to the Labour Party, I must want something for it. When I gave £1.2m to my local hospital to improve paediatric accident and emergency care, did they think I wanted better care for my kids? I have been a very successful guy through my own hard work and I do believe in putting my money where my mouth is."

He has vowed to continue his political donations, and says he is "open and proud" of his support for New Labour.

"My experience in life has been starting companies and growing them, and what I've learnt in doing that is that the best way to make a successful company is to have entrepreneurial drive but also to have fairness, where there is opportunity for people based on their abilities. I do believe that is what the Labour Party – the current Labour Party – stands for. I am a Blair man, and I was a supporter of Margaret Thatcher."

Mr Drayson confesses himself "amazed" rather than angry or upset by the controversies that have engulfed him, and he doesn't intend to respond by seeking a lower profile. "Taking a lower profile means refusing to answer some questions and I don't think that's consistent," he says.

Anyway, he is still the head of the Biotech Industry Association, the UK industry's lobby group, which put him at the centre of the Government's bioterrorist planning in the wake of 11 September and which has given a platform for his outspoken position on animal testing. While some biotech chief executives have preferred a lower profile, mainly for fear of attracting the aggressive attention of animal rights campaigners, Mr Drayson used his speech at the industry dinner last year to chivvy his peers into signing a letter supporting vivisection that was later published in the Financial Times.

"It is a legal requirement that a pharmaceutical company does animal testing. It's regrettable but with the current technology it is the only way we can be sure that medicines are safe. When asked the question of whether my company does animal testing, I can either duck the issue and say I don't want to talk about that issue, or I can say, yes we do."

Mr Drayson is unlikely to fade from the headlines, even after his decision to split his role as chief executive and chairman at PowderJect – at last, after years of pressure from corporate governance groups and his own non-committal agreement in principle. He co-founded the company in 1993 but it has not so much come of age as reinvented itself in the past few years. Formed to commercialise novel technology for needle-free injections which had been developed at Oxford University, and which has proved disappointing so far, the company bought a string of vaccines companies that transformed it from a cash-burning biotech to a company expected to make £20m this year.

Mr Drayson says: "We're splitting the roles now because we have been through a significant transition to become a pure vaccines company, we have built a strong management team around that, and we know exactly where we are going with this business over the next five to ten years, so it is an appropriate time."

PAUL DRAYSON: HIGH PROFILE

Age: 43, married with four children under six years old.

Pay: Basic salary last year of £347,000, with bonuses and benefits taking total package to £515,000.

Career history: PhD in robotics at Aston University followed by "project champion" job at Trebor, where he created and headed a management buyout of a biscuit business. Created PowderJect in 1993, floating it four years later.

Biggest influence: "At the end of my PhD, my professor, Keith Foster, told me to go and learn about business. He was very keen on engineers being good businessmen, and that was a pivotal moment in my life."