Dear Constituent,
Thank you for contacting me about the Global Vaccine Access.
I am proud that the UK hosted this Global Vaccine Summit in June 2020 to raise vital funds for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to support their work to protect almost half the world’s children against deadly, preventable diseases.
The UK is committed to rapid, equitable access to safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines. This is being done through our £548 million commitment to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment – the international initiative to support global equitable access to vaccines, which the UK helped establish in 2020. As of 2 February, COVAX has provided over I billion doses to 144 participants, https://www.gavi.org/covax-vaccine-roll-out
At the UK-hosted G7 Summit in June 2021, the Prime Minister announced that the UK will share 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses with developing countries by June 2022. Of the vaccines the UK is sharing, 80 per cent will go to COVAX, which remains best-placed to allocate vaccines to where they will be most effective. The remaining 20 per cent are being shared bilaterally. On 30 December, the Government confirmed that it had met its target to donate 30 million vaccines by the end of 2021.
In the Westminster Hall debate on equitable vaccine access on the 13th January, the minister stated that there is a serious risk that a TRIPS waiver (a proposal to suspend intellectual property protections for products and technologies which are set out in the World Trade Organisation Trips agreement) could undermine the intellectual property framework that helped to produce covid-19 vaccines, and could disincentivise future research and development investment. The minister advised that the UK Government remains open to all initiatives that will have a demonstrable impact on vaccine production and distribution, and will continue to engage constructively in discussions at the World Trade Organisation to that end. However, efforts need to be focused on actions that will make timely and substantive differences, such as further voluntary licensing and technology transfer agreements. That is why the UK Government supports the voluntary licensing approach taken by the team at Oxford University and AstraZeneca. Their collaboration with the Serum Institute of India has vastly scaled up manufacturing for global supply.
You can read the debate and the minister’s response in full on the following link, Global Vaccine Access - Hansard - UK Parliament
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.
Sincerely,
