Speaking to Varsity, Cambridge MP Julian Huppert has warned that the proposed merger of two pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, will lead to worsening job prospects for STEM students at Cambridge, and a poor future outlook for Britain’s economy. 

In an exclusive interview, Huppert, a Liberal Democrat MP, Clare fellow and experienced research scientist, argued that the merger “will have a direct impact on the prospects for people in particular disciplines, and will be a longer-term issue about the future of Britain. 

“This matters for students who work in STEM subjects, natscis, chem-eng, all of those subjects, because this could be their employment - even if you don’t work directly for a pharmaceutical company, the supply chains, the companies they work with, the biotechs around it, the pure research that they fund, is affected by this decision. 

“If the takeover happens, it would be the biggest ever takeover of a UK company, and the scale is massive, we’re talking over £60 billion, which is a flabbergasting scale: it’s a thousand pounds for every person in the country”.

Huppert added: “[The merger] has real consequences for our science base, our skills base, our manufacturing base within the UK, but also longer term, how is Britain going to earn its way in the world in 2050? That’s a really important thing for us to think about. 

“It’s not going to be by just being a low tax haven where companies domicile themselves in the way they’ve done in Jersey and various other places. That’s not how we’re going to earn our living.

“Our living surely has to be about knowledge based industries, the sorts of things that this university is so fantastic at preparing people for. That has to be our future”. 

Read the full interview here.