Paul Drayson

Paul Rudd Drayson, Baron Drayson (born 5 March 1960) is a British businessman, amateur racing driver and politician. He was Minister of Science in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills until May 2010, where he replaced Ian Pearson. In June 2009 he was additionally appointed as Minister of State for Strategic Defence Acquisition Reform at the Ministry of Defence. After losing his ministerial positions in the 2010 General Election 2010 he stated that he would devote himself totally towards his motorsports company Drayson Racing Technology.

Education

After attending St Dunstan's College, Drayson graduated from Aston University in Production Engineering, followed in 1986 by a PhD in robotics also from Aston.

Powderject

See Main Page Powderject

Lobbying role

Between 2001 and 2002 Drayson was the Chairman of the BioIndustry Association. In 2002 and 2003 Powderject donated to the newly created Science Media Centre. In 2005 and 2006 Drayson was appointed as a member of the board of the Science Media Centre. He was listed on the SMC site between at least 4 April 2005 and 9 January 2006.

Ministerial role

On 6 May 2005 Drayson replaced Lord Bach as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Minister for Defence Procurement and as Government Spokesman for Defence to the House of Lords. His remit included oversight of the Defence Procurement Agency and Defence Logistics Organisation.

Just over a week after his appointment the Sunday Times reported that Drayson had 'admitted holding part of his personal fortune in an offshore tax haven that experts say could have helped him avoid £3m in tax. Lord Drayson, the new defence minister, established offshore trusts and companies in the Isle of Man that handled £30m he raised from the sale of his pharmaceuticals business. Experts say such arrangements are normally set up to avoid tax.

According to the Sunday Times:

Drayson set up two offshore trusts -named Ventana and Amalfi -for him and his wife in 1997 shortly before PowderJect, the company he co-founded, was floated on the stock market. Each trust, registered in Douglas, the capital of the Isle of Man, held 2.825m shares in PowderJect. Six months later the Draysons formed two offshore companies, Vardale and Sherdley, which were owned by the two trusts.

In 2003, PowderJect was bought by an American company that paid the Draysons' offshore companies more than £30m for their shares. The money was sent to the Isle of Man, beyond the grasp of the UK Inland Revenue.

the Sunday Times also reported that Drayson 'closed his offshore companies on March 8 this year - the week before Gordon Brown, the chancellor, introduced new laws to restrict British residents' use of tax havens... Yesterday, Drayson admitted holding "financial interests" offshore but said he brought his money back to Britain in the autumn.

On 6 March 2007 Drayson was promoted to Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support. He oversaw the new Defence Equipment and Support Organisation.

On 29 June 2007 he also became a Minister of State in the newly created Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, responsible for business and regulatory reform and combining this with his role in the Ministry of Defence.

He stood down from ministerial responsibilities on 7 November 2007. His official reason for stepping down was his wish to participate in the Le Mans race, but it has been reported that the actual reasons were being left out of the loop when Prime Minister Brown decided to disband the Defence Export Services Organisation and equipment budget deficits which would make the follow-up to the DIS largely irrelevant. His job as Defence Procurement Minister was transferred to Ann Taylor.

On 3 October 2008 Drayson retiurned to government being appointed by Gordon Brown as Minister of State for Science and Innovation in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills following a cabinet reshuffle. Drayson continued in place on the creation of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills in June 2009.

In 2009 he gained an additional ministerial appointment as Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence.

Drayson lost his ministerial positions as a result of the general election on 11 May 2010.

Affiliations

• Chairman of the Oxford Children's Hospital Campaign since 2002.
• Since 2003, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Said Business School, Oxford University.

• Science Media Centre Scientists comment on the appointment of Paul Drayson as Science Minister October 3, 2008.

Ministerial role and conflict of interest

In 2005 the then UK prime minister Tony Blair placed in the Ministry of Defence the man who went on to become Lord David Sainsbury's successor as Minister of Science - Paul Drayson (created Lord Drayson in 2004), the former head of the BioIndustry Association .

Like the Sainsbury-Blair relationship, the Blair-Drayson relationship has been mired in allegations of corruption and cronyism. Both gave huge sums of money to Labour. Sainsbury gave Labour its biggest ever single donation in September 1997. Within a month he was made a life peer by Blair and a year later he was made Minister for Science. The former head of the Bioindustry Association, Paul Drayson, is also a Party donor and has also been given a peerage by Tony Blair in highly controversial circumstances that led to accusations that Blair was 'compromising the peerage system'.

The controversy began when Drayson, previously an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, made a substantial donation to Labour while the Ministry of Defence was deciding who should be awarded a smallpox vaccine contract. Drayson gave a further donation of half a million pounds to Labour just six weeks after the PM made him Lord Drayson.

Controversially, the Blair government - in what has been called a 'cash-for-contracts' scandal - awarded Drayson's company, PowderJect, the smallpox vaccine contract without any competition (rival drug companies have claimed they were not allowed to bid for the contract).

The Department of Health at first kept its deal with Drayson's company a secret, through claims of "national security". The contract was worth GBP32million and Drayson is thought to have made around GBP20m for PowderJect from this deal.

It later emerged that Drayson had been in a group of businessmen who had breakfasted with the Prime Minister in Downing Street at about the time Ministry of Defence (MoD) experts were meeting to decide what type of smallpox vaccine to buy. When the vaccine deal came to be finalised, officials discovered that Drayson had already made an exclusive deal with the manufacturer of the Lister smallpox vaccine, thus cornering the market in the vaccine the MoD had decided to buy.

Then Health Minister John Hutton responding to the question of why Powderjet had been awarded the contract claimed that 'they were the only company that was able to supply the vaccine that we required as soon as possible. That was the only consideration in our minds'. This is despite the claim by the Department of Health that 'there was no credible immediate threat of an attack'.

It is also said that after meetings between Drayson's BioIndustry Association and a Treasury minister, Blair's then Chancellor (Gordon Brown) uncharacteristically approved a tax reform which would save Drayson's company an immediate GBP2m on its tax bill.

After selling his company for a very considerable profit, Lord Drayson described himself as 'a very successful guy through my own hard work'.

Lobbying and science policy activities

Sense About Science

Drayson served on a working party of the controversial pro-GM lobby-group Sense About Science

Science Media Centre

Drayson's company, while he still headed it, was a financial supporter of the Science Media Centre (in 2002 and 2003). Powderject's support for the SMC dried up following Drayson's departure. However, in 2005 and Drayson was appointed to the board of the SMC and appears to have served a two year term.

While Drayson was the head of the BioIndustry Association, it proposed sweeping new restrictions on the right to protest which would make it difficult to legally conduct a boycott or even protest against a corporation. It also can do no harm to have the former head of a lobby group whose motto is 'Promoting UK Biotechnology', joining first a ministry that hands out bio-defence contracts and then becoming Minister of Science.

Career

• 1986-91: managing director, Lambourn Food Company.
• 1998-1992: managing Director of Justin de Blank Ltd.
• 1993-2003: co-founder and chief executive of Powderject.
• 2004: raised to the peerage as Baron Drayson of Kensington.
• 2005: appointed under-secretary of state and minister for Defence Procurement, and government spokesman for defence in the House of Lords.

Biography

• Lord Drayson of Kensington, UK government Dept for Business, Innovation and Skills website, accessed 7 August 2009