Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the World Health Organisation Director General's statement on 9 April 2021 on the imbalance in the global distribution of covid-19 vaccines.

The UK is committed to rapid, equitable access to safe and effective vaccines. We are proud of our £548 million commitment to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), which is the largest and most rapid global vaccine rollout in history. Our commitment helped encourage other donors to commit $1 billion by the end of 2020, and our funding will contribute to the supply of at least 1.3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines in 2021 for up to 92 developing countries. Over 100 countries and economies have received COVAX deliveries. The Prime Minister has also said that the UK will share the majority of future vaccine doses surplus to domestic needs with COVAX.

COVAX partners have supported the fastest global roll-out of new vaccines in history, but more needs to be done. We are working with our partners, including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and others to accelerate the global production and supply of COVID-19 vaccines as a priority. On 15 April, I spoke at the AMC Investment Opportunity Launch supporting the COVAX Advance Market Commitment 2021 investment case. This will help secure a further $2 billion from donors for procuring 500 million more doses to increase vaccine coverage from 20% to 30% in developing countries in 2021.