Covid-19: International Response

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, this is an important and necessary debate on the day that the World Health Assembly is holding its annual meeting. Here are some observations and questions, which I hope the Minister will be able to cover in her reply.

First, no one should try to argue that the international community and multilateral organisations have so far put in a stellar performance during this crisis. There have been gaps in the international response, slowness in reacting and failures. These are lessons to be learned and applied when the next pandemic comes along, as it will.

Secondly, neither denial, as in the early stages in China, or as in the US, Brazil and Russia, which has proved pretty disastrous, nor scapegoating, as with the US freezing of its contributions to the WHO, has done other than make a bad situation worse. That US action was deplorable. Are the Government standing by the WHO and joining with others to repair the damage?

Thirdly, it makes no sense to blame multilateral organisations—the UN, the WHO and the EU—for not exercising powers that their members have not been prepared to give them.

Fourthly, on health aspects of the crisis, do the Government agree that the research into vaccines and into antibody and other tests should, as a matter of principle, be open-sourced and available to researchers worldwide?

Fifthly, do the Government agree that, once developed, these remedies should be patent-free and that a major effort should be made to boost availability to the poorer countries?

Sixthly, do the Government see merit in the idea that all Governments should accept a legal obligation to stock PPE equipment, modelled loosely on the response to the 1973 oil crisis?

Seventhly, on the economic and financial consequences of the pandemic, do the Government accept that not only debt postponement but debt write-off will be needed for developing countries and do they support the unlocking of special drawing rights that are being unused?

Finally, do the Government agree that the highest priority needs to be given to keeping open world trade under the rules-based system of the WTO? A protectionist response, which in the 1930s turned a financial crisis into a world slump with disastrous political consequences, is an avoidable catastrophe.