World Health Organization: Pandemics

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we are extremely hopeful for the IPPPR process, and we have supported the team in its desire to get to the bottom of its investigations. I do not know the specifics of the bat viruses to which my noble friend refers, but I reassure him that the British Government are leaning on the WHO as hard as we possibly can to make the most of this important investigation.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Given the cuts to the aid budget which have been announced, and given that experience shows that the world’s reaction to pandemics is to panic and then forget—which Covid-19 has cruelly exposed—can the Minister expand on how HMG are going to support the World Health Organization to address the immediate urgent work to fight the pandemic and to build for the future the firepower and structure to better handle an issue of global magnitude under the Government’s current budget constraints?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the financial support of the WHO from the Government is generous, and so is our support of COVAX. When it comes to the WHO, we are looking for stronger horizon scanning and early warning, higher-quality technical guidance that is tailored to different countries and resource settings, and greater co-ordination of governance and activity across the animal, human and environmental interface. This is a really clear manifesto. The Prime Minister has laid it out clearly, and we are using the G7 process to ensure that there is support for it across the G7 countries.