Covid-19: Vaccine Donations

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an important point. The UK has engaged and continues to engage thoroughly on the issues around the TRIPS waiver, which has been discussed. We have certainly seen how we can work though transferring technology, for example. Indeed, early on in the pandemic, that same working together aided the world, in bringing together India and the UK on the Serum Institute of India initiative with the University of Oxford.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, in the wake of the new omicron variant, which undermines existing vaccination efforts, will the Minister support the temporary TRIPS waiver proposed by South Africa and India to the WTO and supported by more than 100 countries, including the US? This would allow for widespread manufacturing scale-up regionally, ensure that all countries could get access to the vaccines they need to protect their populations and reduce the risk to all of us of new variants emerging.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I share the noble Baroness’s concern. We are engaging pragmatically on the TRIPS waiver. However, when looking into some of the hurdles that developing parts of the world have faced, we see that the main issue is still a lack of skills, in terms not just of health infrastructure but physical distribution of the vaccine even once it is in country. Vaccine hesitancy is also a large barrier. As I have said, we are engaging on the TRIPS waiver, but we are very clear that any negotiation should not lead to a reduction in the quality of the vaccine.