Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, has thrown his weight behind a £20m science park near Cambridge, for which a wealthy entrepreneur is struggling to gain planning permission.

As the Financial Times disclosed last month, Edward Atkin – who made £225m by selling his company Avent, a world leader in babies’ feeding bottles, to a venture capital business – wants to spend some of his fortune on bringing innovative companies to a site he owns in the village of Great Abingdon.