Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-09
Topic: Health
Syed Kamall (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for bringing this debate before the Committee today and for the heartfelt speech that she gave. The noble Baroness will be aware of the view of this Government following her recent Question in the House on the subject of patient waivers. As my noble friend Lord Grimstone set out, the Government remain open to all initiatives that would have a demonstrably positive impact on vaccine production and distribution. However, we believe that waiving intellectual property rights would have the opposite effect. Doing so would dismantle the very framework that helped to develop and produce Covid-19 vaccines at the pace and scale now seen. It would risk undermining the continued innovation in vaccines and technological health products that is required to tackle a virus, especially as it mutates and evolves, so we believe that doing so would be a mistake Instead, the success of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout vindicates the value of public and private co-operation. While university research departments are great at research, large-scale manufacturing and global distribution are not their function, so we recognise the importance of their working with partners with expertise in this area The intellectual property framework is key to those efforts. It has incentivised the research and development that has led to the development of Covid-19 vaccines. It has given innovators the confidence to form more than 300 partnerships, an unprecedented number, and has contributed to the production and dissemination of vaccines and other health products and technologies across the world, with global Covid vaccine production now at nearly 1.5 billion doses per month I share the noble Baroness’s intention that research funded through taxpayer finances should benefit the taxpayer, but we do not consider that that is best achieved through particular constraints in primary legislation. Research contracts afford greater flexibility and more powerful levers than the amendment, through provisions such as those requiring the dissemination of intellectual property for patient benefit, revenue sharing with the Government of commercialised intellectual property, and requirements around access to medicines in the developing world. Contractual protection mechanisms in funding arrangements can also ensure that intellectual property funded by taxpayers results in the creation of taxpayer benefit We recognise the importance of ensuring that developing countries have access to vaccines, not least for global health security, for many of the reasons that noble Lords have outlined today. The UK is developing common principles to standardise the approach in research funding to encourage equitable access for less developed countries—for example, the National Institute for Health Research clauses are considered a global exemplar in this space. In addition, the UK is already supportive of the right to use flexibilities within the TRIPS intellectual property framework by other countries where necessary in order to achieve their public health and public policy objectives The UK has taken a wide range of issues to improve access. We are wholeheartedly committed to addressing vaccine equity on every front, including through our trade policy. We have demonstrated this through our sponsorship and promotion of the trade and health initiative as well as the unilateral measures that we have taken, including tariff suspensions. In line with our G7 commitments, we have donated over 30 million vaccine doses and will have donated 100 million vaccine doses by June 2022, 80% of which will go to COVAX, where doses will be distributed in line with COVAX’s fair allocation model In addition, the Government have provided technical support to aid the development of regional manufacturing capabilities. One of the issues that often comes up in my conversations with G7 and G20 Ministers is how to ensure that while we have access to vaccines, and we are talking about the third and possibly fourth doses, some countries have not had the first dose yet. We feel that it is important to find how we can work together, particularly on some of the barriers in countries, such as distribution networks. You may get the vaccines into a country, but how do you get the jabs into the arms? How do you make sure that they are stored at the appropriate temperatures, for example We have also been discussing health partnerships. In one of my early meetings as a Minister with my counterparts in Kenya, the issue came up of how to help Kenya and other countries to improve their manufacturing capacity locally. A lot of this, in trade and aid speak, is capacity building—that is, making sure that they have the expertise but also the distribution networks. There is good technology in this area. Drone technology promises great advances where you can leapfrog over existing poor distribution networks. So we will continue to focus on improving health readiness, ensuring the distribution of manufactured doses and building vaccine confidence in order to get these jabs into arms so that we are all safe I give a personal example. When I was in the European Parliament, I often went on delegations. I was particularly interested in how you help the very poorest countries through trade. Quite often when I spoke to entrepreneurs in these countries I would say, "What more can we do to help you? What barriers do we need to remove?" They would say, "There is so much that you can do, but sometimes half the problem is with our own Government and our own poor governance. It is these issues and poor distribution networks that inhibit our development." We have to be aware of country-by-country differences, but we also have to make sure that we build capability so that we are no longer talking about aid but instead are helping countries to help themselves in this area We believe that our approach is the right one: building capacity in other countries, health partnerships and working multilaterally across the world to ensure equitable access to vaccines. It is for these reasons that I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.