Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I shall focus my brief remarks on the vaccine—the light at the end of this long and very dark tunnel. The Minister is absolutely right that British science has made an enormous contribution to this, and we should be proud of it. It is also an excellent example of public/private partnership, which I have always believed in. However, there are worries. A lot of noble Lords have concentrated on how we speed up the distribution of the vaccine. I endorse the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, about the use of community pharmacies. We should not leave them out, and we should go for the fastest-possible distribution.

However, what about manufacturing? What are the supply chain problems that limit the amount of vaccine available? I was very struck by an article in this morning’s Financial Times by Gustav Oertzen, who argued that there is a conflict between the public interest in the widest, quickest-possible distribution of the vaccine and the interests of the pharma companies, which want an extended production schedule over as long a time as possible to ensure a payback on their investment. Do the Government recognise this as a problem? If we are to go on a war footing, as the noble Lord, Lord Caine, put it, do we not have to have an honest dialogue with the pharma companies? Ought we not to think about how to incentivise them to produce things more quickly, and, if necessary, would we be prepared, as in wartime, to be more interventionist and have more direct control?