Details of Labour donor's £20m deal

A Labour donor who secured exclusive rights to a Government vaccine deal had attended a breakfast meeting at Downing Street, new papers reveal.

They describe how Lord Drayson's Powderject company made an estimated £20million by cornering the market just as the Government was about to buy huge quantities of smallpox vaccine.

The documents reveal the Ministry of Defence held a meeting on 30 November, 2001, to discuss buying the vaccine to protect Britons from terrorists using biological weapons.

Government scientists decided to buy a type of vaccine, the Lister strain. Meanwhile the MoD was in talks with a German-Danish firm, Bavarian Nordic, one of the main manufacturers.

On 6 December, Lord Drayson was among a group of businessmen invited to a private breakfast at No 10. Later, when MoD experts visited the Bavarian Nordic factory to finalise a deal, they discovered his company had exclusive rights to act as middle man in any sales to the Government.

Downing Street refused to disclose whether Mr Blair discussed the smallpox vaccine with Lord Drayson at the breakfast, saying: "We never go into detail about these meetings."