Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer to Question 59474, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of a voluntary approach to intellectual property in supporting equitable access to covid-19 medical technologies.

The UK believes that voluntary licensing is a preferable way to support equitable access to COVID-19 medical technologies. It allows third-party manufacturers to produce innovative products, enables innovators to make an informed decision on sharing their intellectual property (IP), and provides flexibility for parties in agreeing how to ensure access to technologies.

Voluntary approaches have underpinned the development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines. For example, Oxford University's partnership with AstraZeneca, and subsequently the Serum Institute of India, has generated mass scale-up of their vaccine technology.