For the economy of Sandwich, in Kent, George Osborne's budget brings little hope for when Pfizer closes, its 2,400 jobs are lost – and its scientists leave
"We want the words 'Made in Britain', 'Created in Britain', 'Designed in Britain', 'Invented in Britain' to drive our nation forward. A Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers. That is how we will create jobs and support families," George Osborne declared as his budget's finale.
The residents of Sandwich, where the pharmaceutical company Pfizer is soon to close its research and development facility – with a loss of 2,400 jobs – will be watching to see how that pledge materialises over the next few months. Viagra was made, created, designed and invented here; new drugs will not be.
"Science is one area where Britain already has an advantage over many other countries – and it is central to our future as a place to create businesses," the chancellor promised elsewhere in his speech, giving details of investment in science facilities at a number of locations, and revealing the sites for 10 enterprise zones across the country.
But none of these announcements offered immediate aid to the site near Dover, and the budget provided little instant comfort to the region around the Pfizer plant, which is bracing itself for the imminent departure of its most highly paid, highly skilled and best-educated residents. Many of them are expected to leave the country for jobs abroad. The site's closure means the loss of a key UK science research centre.
Pfizer is the biggest employer in this area. If companies that are ready to take over the site are not found soon, then the 2,400 remaining Pfizer employees will quickly leave the area. Another 1,700 contractors, who work on the site, as technicians and support staff, will also lose their jobs. Along with cleaners, caterers, security staff, and parallel public sector redundancies, the total loss of jobs in the area could be 5,000, according to local MPs.
Even the most stoical figures, such as the town's Conservative mayor, Terence Clifford-Amos, concede that the impact on the region will be substantial.
"There is gloom regarding the wholesale loss of jobs and is a gloom concerning just how that will affect the local economy," he said yesterday. There was little to "uplift the deflated working classes" in the budget, he added. "Where you have a community directly dependent on the local economy for jobs, it will be a while before the jobs become available again; that gloom may be there for some time."
Paul Carter, the leader of Kent county council and head of the Sandwich economic development taskforce, set up by the government to find a way of saving jobs in the area, was more upbeat: he said he understood that Sandwich was under consideration for inclusion among the next batch of 11 enterprise zones to be announced later this year, and said he hoped the area would also, in time, benefit from a regional growth fund bid. "I am really optimistic that this will be an enormous driver for change," he said. He paid tribute to the business secretary, Vince Cable, and universities and science minister, David Willetts, for trying to find a solution.
Locally, however, there is growing concern that the time for finding replacement employers is rapidly running out, and that unless alternative employers step in fast, the momentum will disappear, as senior staff begin to find jobs elsewhere and abandon the area.
"I didn't see anything really in the budget that would help," said Andrew Miller, Labour MP and chair of the science and technology committee, as he called on the government to speed up its attempts to preserve the area as a hub for scientific talent and expertise.
"I am concerned that without urgent action we will lose many highly skilled people to jobs elsewhere in the UK and elsewhere," he said.
On the surface, Sandwich appears very prosperous. The town smells of cut grass and its streets are so quiet that the most striking noise is of lambs bleating in the distance, pigeons cooing and tennis balls patting between rackets on an unseen court. "I'm knackered. I spent the morning playing golf," a young man tells a woman on a quiet street corner.
Struggling region
Tourist brochures point out that the medieval town has the longest stretch of timber-framed buildings in the country, and the Open golf championship will come here in July. But as Laura Sandys, the new Tory MP for South Thanet, explained, the face of the town centre is not representative of the wider region that will be affected by the departure of Pfizer. The company may be situated in the south-east but the surrounding areas of Thanet and Dover are not typical of the region. They have struggled to recover from the closure of local collieries in the 1980s and the decline of British seaside tourism.
"There are levels of deprivation that you don't see anywhere else in the south-east. We have the highest number of looked-after children in the country, the highest level of unemployment in the south, the highest level of teenage pregnancies in the south-east. The departure of Pfizer will bring the average wage in the area down to £17,000 – that is not a south-east wage," Sandys said. The area is the 64th most deprived district in the country, next after Wigan, she added.
Part of the problem is the poor transport links to London that make this town more remote than it looks on the map. Improvements to the rail network were announced elsewhere in the UK in the budget, but not to this part of Kent – one resident said that it is "just 85 miles to Canary Wharf, but getting there is so slow, it might as well be 850 miles".
Pfizer employees are unwilling to speak to the press, because of internal regulations, but one local resident, very familiar with the sector, said the departure of scientists would not only be difficult for the local community, but would be a "catastrophe for British science".
"The town has been here for 1,000 years – it will survive. Whether or not it will prosper is another matter. A huge amount of money is being taken out of the local economy," he said. More troubling was the start of the brain drain as a result of the job losses. Scientists here had been working on developing HIV antivirals, as well as allergy, respiratory and pain-related drugs. The best scientists from the site might go to Cambridge, or other UK companies, he predicted, but most would go to Switzerland, Silicon Valley or south-east Asia. "This is one of just three similar plants in the UK, and it's gone. Pfizer staff represent a highly educated and skilled workforce. Forget the economics of it: the guys here produced some of the world's best medicines, and now we will never know what they could have produced next; it could have been the next penicillin," he said.
Everyone locally is concerned about how the area will feel once the 2,400 highest-paid jobs are stripped out of the economy. The local estate agents, naturally, are alarmed at the prospect of a rush to sell. Simon Grieves, senior partner at Colebrook Sturrock, said he was doing a lot of valuations for Pfizer staff, who were planning to move abroad. "The decision is likely to push prices down in the long term, although this hasn't happened yet," he said. "We are still in a state of shock."
Chris Morgan, headteacher at Sir Roger Manwood's grammar school, said 100 of the schools 915 pupils have parents employed by Pfizer. "At the moment no one has left. We are still in a hiatus, waiting to feel what the full impact will be," he said. If large numbers of Pfizer families leave, he expects the school's clientele to change.
In the meantime he is trying to make pupils feel that the "world is their oyster, rather than just east Kent" – not least because locally there is little beside Pfizer to offer graduates. "It is not a magnet for graduate employment, that's for sure. I don't think many people come back here after university. We are preparing them for a global market," he said.
Clifford-Amos, Sandwich's mayor, said a recent advertisement for the "not particularly well-paid part-time post as a tourist information adviser attracted 46 highly qualified applications, including two Cambridge graduates. It shows that whatever jobs appear in the town, there will be severe competition."
John Bragg, a former mayor and one of Pfizer's earliest employees, who helped set up the site in the 1950s, was not sure how much this or previous governments could have done to reverse the decision taken by Pfizer executives in New York. He was despondent about the prospects for the area.
"If Pfizer had been hugely successful, this decision would not have been taken," he said. "The site used to light up the night sky. There are terrific facilities there – wonderful research laboratories. Soon it will be derelict. There was a hum about the whole area. That's gone now. It's very depressing. Millions and millions a year have been circulating in the area in salary bills. Those people who are earning now, putting money into the economy, will suddenly be on benefits."