Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to the report by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Department of Health & Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement, and Public Health England, entitled Investigation into preparations for potential COVID-19 vaccines, what plans his Department has made to redistribute the UK's vaccine surplus to countries struggling to obtain sufficient supplies of covid-19 vaccines.

Equitable global access is an integral part of the UK's approach to vaccine development and distribution. The health of every country depends on the whole world having access to safe and effective vaccines. We are supporting the COVAX Facility as the best mechanism to deliver this, and have committed £548 million to its work in supporting access for low and middle income countries, which makes the UK one of its largest donors.

It is too early to determine how many doses of the vaccines that the UK has ordered will not be needed for domestic use. We are working through multilateral institutions, such as the UN and G20, as well as the World Health Organisation and other international partners like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI) and Gavi the Vaccine Alliance to support vaccine development, manufacturing scale-up, and distribution to meet domestic as well as international needs both now and in the future.