Labour donor's drug company is favourite for smallpox jab contract

A drug company run by a Labour Party donor emerged yesterday as the favourite to win a lucrative government contract for smallpox vaccines needed to protect Britain against a terror attack.

Powderject Pharmaceuticals, run by Paul Drayson, was one of three firms that submitted bids to supply between 30 and 60 million doses of vaccine worth up to £120m.

Labour's links to big business came under further criticism over a £2.5m donation to the party by Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the Science minister.

The Government provoked controversy last year by awarding a much smaller but exclusive £32m contract to Powderject for emergency supplies of the Lister strain of smallpox.

Mr Drayson gave £100,000 to the party, including a £50,000 gift weeks before winning the contract, which was commissioned by ministers when they found stocks totalled just three million doses.

The latest contract is intended to build enough stocks to allow "ring vaccination" of anyone within an area hit by a biological terror attack.

The Department of Health confirmed that three unnamed companies had submitted confidential bids by yesterday's noon deadline for the contract tender. Powderject revealed that it was one of the bidders. The department stressed that no decision had been made on the winner of the contract, but Powderject became firm favourite after its main rival, Acambis, pulled out.

Acambis, based in Cambridge, claimed that the contract was skewed in Powderject's favour because it was the main supplier to the UK of the Lister strain of the vaccine.

The American authorities have ordered Acambis to provide 209 million doses of a different "battle-strain" of the vaccine and Labour MPs have complained that Britain should follow suit.

The Department of Health said the latest contract was openly advertised in the Official Journal of European Communities and followed strict tendering criteria.

In a separate controversy, Mark Seddon, a member of Labour's national executive committee, said yesterday that Lord Sainsbury's £2.5m donation was a form of "corruption" of the political process. Mr Seddon told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that gifts of such a size would lead to Labour losing members who would see the party being in the "pockets of the powerful and the rich". Lord Sainsbury has donated £8.5m to Labour since 1999.

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