Vaccine Patents Waiver

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, the UK remains open to all initiatives that will have a demonstrable impact on vaccine production and distribution, and we will continue to engage constructively in discussions at the WTO to that end and bring forward our own proposals as necessary.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, when I raised the matter of a TRIPS waiver with the Minister during the passage of the Trade Bill on 1 October 2020, when my noble friend Lady Sheehan had an amendment to it, the noble Lord said that it was too soon. Nearly a year later, I pressed the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, who said that the Government remained unconvinced. Six months on, only 10% of Africa is fully vaccinated and, shockingly, 100 million doses had to be declined because they were too close to their expiration date. Without there being a TRIPS waiver, what is the Government’s core estimate of when Africa will be as fully vaccinated as Europe?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid that there is no evidence at all that an IP rights waiver of the kind that the noble Lord suggests would help us to meet his objectives. The reality is that a proposal for a TRIPS waiver would break up the very framework that helped to produce Covid-19 vaccines at an unprecedented pace. That is the key point.