The plan for expanding the site, which manufactures the flu vaccine, was announced by the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt in the spring budget in 2024.

A spokesman for the government said that a change in the “composition of the investment” that had originally been proposed led to a reduction in the government grant.

Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, said that there was no rift with the government, but the deal was no longer “financially viable” but the same level of financing as agreed earlier.

“It was not possible for the government to motivate it, which we completely understand, and we said we could not justify it either,” he said.

“We were all very disappointed, but it’s business.”

Lord Storey said he feared that the government did not “put Liverpool and Merseyside high on its growth”.

“All the money spent by the government must be carefully considered, but my point is if they have billions of pounds for growth, mainly in the southeast, do they look closely at the money there?” he said.

“No, they are not – they just say they will provide that money and infrastructure – Liverpool seems to be missing again.”

In the House of Lords on Thursday morning, Lord Storey asked an urgent question to Lord Vallance, prime minister for science, research and innovation.

He asked if the Liverpool City Region’s Metro mayor, Steve Rotheram, was “conscious” about discussions about AstraZeneca and how the government planned to develop the city’s life science sector.

Lord Vallance said that Rotheram was conscious and emphasized that AstraZeneca would still produce vaccines at its Speke site.

“I recently talked to Metro mayor about how we can make sure that (research and development) funding supports what Metro mayor is trying to achieve,” he said.