EU Coronavirus Vaccine Programme

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I am afraid the noble Lord is wrong on his first point, but on his supplementary points I can agree with him. I can confirm that we are supporting a number of different research platforms and vaccine technologies, both through our discussions with companies and through our global efforts, alongside helping to fund research on a vaccine at Oxford University with the help of AstraZeneca. We have committed £250 million of UK aid to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an organisation that is working on a global scale to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

In April, the World Health Organization said that countries must work together to develop a number of Covid-19 vaccines that have concluded successful clinical trials and demonstrate that they can manufacture many millions of doses faster than ever achieved before—none of which is a given. The UK was a signatory to the following World Health Organization declaration:

“We will continue efforts to strengthen the unprecedented worldwide collaboration, cooperation … and we will work tenaciously to increase the likelihood that one or more safe … vaccines will soon be made available to all.”


On this basis, why are the UK Government still refusing to collaborate with the EU vaccine scheme?

[Lord Callanan]

I did not catch all of that question; the audio was a bit poor. If the noble Baroness is saying that we should continue to co-operate on an international level, I would completely agree with her. I set out earlier the reasons why we did not think it was right to participate in this particular EU initiative, but we do not rule out participating in other EU procurement initiatives and we are in discussions on how we might do that.