HIV and AIDS: Vaccine

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, but perhaps all noble Lords would be brief so that we can hear as many questions as possible. We will hear from the noble Baroness and then from the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. We should have time for both.

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord, Lord Walton, indicated the real challenges here. This needs basic research, and the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust are best able to assess what may have better prospects. They have stepped up their contributions.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I was the Civil Science Minister at the time when HIV came in. The late Lord Joseph and I had been advised by both the advisory board for the Research Councils and the MRC that there was no way in which research science could keep absolutely on the frontiers of all the subjects which were available to it. When HIV came in, they had to tell us that, unfortunately, research in virology had fallen back. Could my noble friend give us some indication of how far that setback has been repaired in the past 30 years, particularly given the salience of this issue in west Africa at present?

[Baroness Northover]

I just mentioned the level of research and development money going into product development for HIV. I expect the noble Lord will know that Imperial College is leading in this area. I visited the human immunology laboratory at Imperial, which is taking forward vaccine research in a number of different areas. The noble Lord will also know that the number of years it has taken to develop viable vaccines in various areas—10 years for measles, 16 years for hepatitis, 25 years for cervical cancer and 47 years for polio—bears out the particular challenge referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Walton.