I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking in the debate. This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I also remind Members that they are asked by the House to take a lateral flow test before coming on to the estate. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.
That this House has considered global vaccine access.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the time for the debate. I thank those Members who are here and those who have given apologies—a number who intended to speak are speaking in the other Backbench Business debate in the Chamber—for their support. I also thank those members of the International Development Committee who are here.
In preparing for the debate, I looked back at the Backbench Business debate focused specifically on covid-19 vaccine access that I secured all the way back in November 2020. It is an odd achievement, but I was the first Member to use the phrase “vaccine nationalism” in the House. On reflection, I am saddened that, more than a year later, we are having a similar debate relating to covid and other vaccine programmes, with a number of issues unresolved.
I will focus the majority of my remarks on covid-19; it is difficult not to. In some respects things have changed considerably in the past 14 months. We now have a number of licensed vaccines in the UK, 90% of over-12s have had at least one jag or jab—whatever you prefer to call it—and more than half are fully boosted. I commend and thank all those who have worked tirelessly to create these vaccines and to ensure that they reached the public and those who need them. However, it has sadly not all been good news.
In November 2020, we were only just hearing about the delta variant spreading in India—a strain that would not enter the UK until February last year. We almost never talk about it now, as in a few short weeks from the end of year, omicron spread throughout the world and entered the UK. It was a stark reminder of something that has been said many times before: we are simply not safe until everyone is safe. While 90% of over-12s in the UK have had at least one vaccine—my own children are part of that number—that falls to 60% of the world overall.
Order. If Members stick to around three minutes each, we should have time to fit everybody in. There seem to be a substantial number of Members who want to contribute. I call Theo Clarke.
2:03 pm
Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing this important debate on global vaccine access.
I start by thanking the healthcare workers, NHS staff and volunteers who have helped Britain to have one of the most successful coronavirus vaccination programmes in the world. I also pay tribute to our scientists who have worked to develop coronavirus vaccines, and thank the Government for funding this vaccine development. I was grateful to receive my vaccines at the Kingston Centre and St George’s Hospital in Stafford, and I was delighted to hear that over 2.5 million vaccines were given in the west midlands in December alone. Seeing the vaccine roll-out in my own Stafford constituency has made me passionate about the need for global vaccine access.
Britain has always been at the forefront of global healthcare. The efforts of consecutive British Governments and the generosity of the British public has helped to eliminate many diseases globally. Britain was a founding member of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and this Government are continuing to champion access to vaccines.
As Chair of the International Development Sub-Committee, I welcomed the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s recent information note on GAVI that highlighted the need to establish worldwide vaccination programmes for dangerous diseases, such as polio, as well as rolling out coronavirus vaccinations. In September, I met with GAVI at its headquarters in Geneva, to discuss the coronavirus vaccine roll-out, and to ensure that the poorest and most marginalised communities in the world are not left behind.
I welcome that Britain is one of the most generous donors to GAVI, pledging £1.65 billion from 2020 to 2025. During the height of the pandemic in June 2020, Britain led the hosting of the GAVI replenishment conference, and I was pleased that fundraising target the was exceeded, with world leaders pledging $8.8 billion. That was a crucial step in tackling the coronavirus pandemic, which, as we know from experience, shows that vaccines do work in protecting us from infectious illnesses.
Polio provides another example of how vaccines can be used to tackle terrible diseases. In 1988, over 70 million people worldwide were infected with polio, and more than 350,000 people developed paralytic polio. The Government’s generous financial support for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative meant that 2018 saw only 33 cases of polio worldwide. That represents millions of people being saved from the perils of polio by one simple vaccine. That is a real example of how vaccination programmes do work, and why we must follow this model and continue to provide global access to vaccines in order to end the coronavirus pandemic.
I will not take interventions at the moment. As vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Africa, and having visited numerous health programmes across eastern, southern and western Africa, I have seen at first hand the devasting impact that diseases can have on people already living in challenging circumstances. I welcome the recent breakthrough with the malaria vaccine which, like the coronavirus vaccine, has the potential to make a real difference throughout the developing world.
I repeatedly raised the importance of COVAX with the then Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), and have done so again with other Foreign Office Ministers, including raising the issue in the Chamber and in International Development Committee evidence sessions. I welcome that Britain took the lead regarding COVAX when hosting the G7 last summer, committing the UK to providing 80 million vaccine doses and helping to secure commitments to COVAX of nearly $10 billion from other developed countries. The Government should be commended for meeting their ambitious target to donate 30 million vaccines to COVAX by the end of 2021.
On my visits to Kenya, as trade envoy, I have seen at first hand the difference these COVAX vaccines have made. On my most recent visit in November, I went to the Kenyatta University Hospital and met with Kenyan doctors and healthcare professionals. This hospital in Nairobi works in partnership with the University of Manchester in order to improve healthcare treatments and tackle infectious diseases. The British also developed the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, which has helped to save lives and improve the life chances of people living in Kenya; I am pleased this has been replicated across the Commonwealth, with over 2.5 billion doses being used in over 170 countries. At the G7 the Prime Minister said that we need a plan to vaccinate the world. If we want a definitive end to this pandemic, then I agree with him.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for securing this debate at a time when the pandemic is wreaking devastation on the poorest and most vulnerable nations on earth and brutally exposing their lack of access to vaccines. I know that she is a longstanding campaigner on the issue of equitable access to vaccines for everyone. I also thank organisations such as Global Justice Now for the important research they have done to raise awareness of this issue. I am a member of the International Development Committee; it is good to see other colleagues from the Committee attend this popular debate. The Chair of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) has done a lot of good work on this issue.
One of the reasons for the pernicious spread of coronavirus, and the high global death toll, is the failure of Governments, such as ours, to support the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights waiver, proposed by the Indian and South African Governments last summer, just months before the omicron variant emerged. That was despite India and South Africa proposing, as far back as October 2020, that a waiver of intellectual property rules on covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments would allow low and middle-income countries to manufacture life-saving tools. Despite most countries, including the United States, supporting the waiver, the UK, the EU and Switzerland all prevented progress.
Action at the time would have led to life-saving covid vaccines, medical equipment and medicines all being produced licence-free. However, more than a year after the start of the global vaccination drive, our Government are still putting hundreds of thousands of lives at risk by not supporting the waiver. The reality is, as we all know, that no one is safe until everyone has access to vaccinations and all nations are immunised.
Some 700 million doses of the vaccine were delivered instead of the 2 billion that were promised through the COVAX programme by the end of the last year. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that what is inherently wrong with the COVAX programme is that it has an unequal distribution embedded in it, and for that reason ensures that facilities that are given exclusive licences are over-relied on. Facilities can also implement export bans in their countries to stop the vaccine being distributed more widely.
My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and I fully agree with her.
I will finish on the point that, despite having already made billions in profit, Pfizer and Moderna continue to refuse to share the new generation of vaccine technology with the World Health Organisation’s mRNA hub in South Africa. That is a major concern, and little appears to have been done since Amnesty International urged Governments, including our own, to deliver 2 billion vaccines to low and middle-income countries before the end of 2021. The continued failure to act will fuel an unprecedented human rights crisis and lead to an untold number of deaths in those countries. We must do more, and the Government have to do a lot better.
To be fair, I am going to have to impose a formal three-minute time limit. That might reduce further because I intend to call the Front Benchers at 2.38 pm. I call Harriet Baldwin next.
I will try to be as quick as possible, Mrs Murray. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing this debate.
I want to report to the House from my privileged position as chair of the British group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. When we had our first in-person gathering of the Parliaments of the world in Madrid in November, one motion came out top of all of the motions put forward from all the Parliaments in the world. Over several days we were able to come up with a form of words that every single politician from every single Parliament that attended was able to sign up to. I want to share it with the House because it demonstrates the value of the work across Parliaments, and also addresses some of the points that the hon. Lady raised in her opening remarks that would make it difficult for me or perhaps even the Government to support everything that she asked for. If Members look up on the internet the Inter-Parliamentary Union minutes of the meeting, they will find links to the motion. I call upon colleagues to look at that because I do not have enough time to go through all of it.
The motion’s crucial wording is around the issue of the World Trade Organisation. There were German parliamentarians at the IPU who would not have been able to support the TRIPS waiver wording, but parliamentarians did work together and came up with some wording that everyone was happy to endorse. It implores parliamentarians to work with their national Governments to exert a global, collective influence on the World Trade Organisation to eliminate all export restrictions and other trade barriers on covid-19 vaccines and the inputs involved in their production. This issue is so important because, as we heard in the opening remarks, we will not be safe until everyone in the world has been vaccinated. The more parts of the world lag behind us on vaccination rates, the more the virus will be able to mutate.
2:16 pm
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Many countries—it will not surprise Members that it is mainly low-income countries—have hardly any access to covid vaccines. Some 2.3% of those in Nigeria have had a vaccine, 1.4% in Ethiopia, 9.8% in Afghanistan, 5% in Syria, 1.2% in Yemen and only 0.1% in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to name just a few; I could obviously go on. It is unsurprising that the consequence of this is that new variants emerge elsewhere and spread quickly through those unvaccinated populations, eventually reaching the UK. No borders, physical or otherwise, can prevent that in what is an interconnected world.
That is why we are having this debate. In that previous debate, the Minister responding, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), told us:
“The UK is proud to be at the forefront of international efforts to develop vaccines, treatments and tests and ensure equitable access for the world’s poorest countries”.—[Official Report, 5 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 575WH.]
Clearly, the situation has not moved at the pace required. I am sure the Minister will point out that the UK has pledged to donate 100 million vaccines, and that the Government reached their target of donating 30 million of those before Christmas. However, we know that getting vaccines out of the UK is only the first part of the story. We have to think about what happens to those vaccines when they arrive. Organisations on the ground report that vaccines arrive in an ad hoc manner, sometimes with little notice. Too often, they arrive with a limited shelf life, leaving in-country health teams—already overstretched, as health teams all over the world are—scrambling to get doses out to people in time. There is also no requirement currently for donations to be sent with necessary supplies, such as syringes and dilutant in order to administer those doses. Without those, a vaccine in a tube is arguably completely useless.
The United Kingdom donates vaccines that it has purchased and deemed surplus to requirements here in the country. That might suit the Government as a way to marry up vaccinations at home with meeting our commitments abroad, but sadly it leads directly to the position that I have just described, so I ask the Minister to address the following questions. Who decides what donations will be made, and when? What processes are in place to ensure that doses are sent in a timely, regular and predictable fashion? Will the Government commit to end the policy of over-purchasing vaccines and donating the surplus, and will they instead commit to putting a policy in place whereby vaccines are donated in large volumes and in a predictable manner, to allow countries to plan their roll-outs?
Will the Government publish the timelines for expected donations from the UK in the coming months as the UK sends the additional 70 million donations that it has pledged? Will they commit to ensure that donated doses have a minimum 10-week shelf life when they arrive in a country, with the exception of when individual countries have stated that they are prepared to take doses with a shorter shelf life? It is clear that in several of the countries that I have described, there are simply not the internal mechanisms in order to be able to deliver vaccines before they expire. Finally, will the Government commit to donate syringes with the vaccines, to ensure that they can actually be used on arrival and that that is something else for countries not to worry about?
I would be grateful if the Minister could address accounting for the cost of the donations. If doses of vaccine are purchased by a country for use on its own population and are then donated, which is exactly what is happening in the UK, the donations are being accounted for in our official development assistance—ODA—budget. To put it more clearly, the Department for Health and Social Care and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office have budgets. The Department for Health and Social Care is using some of its budget to buy vaccines, and when it cannot use them, the FCDO donates them.
However, the FCDO then gets to say that it has purchased those vaccines from its ODA budget, thus artificially reducing the amount of money left to spend elsewhere. Even more concerning is the fact that the UK Government could account for those doses in the ODA spend at a higher price than they paid for them, thus effectively saving money that was committed elsewhere. I ask the Minister to clarify whether this is indeed her Department’s approach. Will she commit to account for the donations outside the ODA budget? If her Department is not in a position to do so, will she commit to ensure that the donations continue to be accounted for as part of ODA at their actual purchase price?
These are partially problems of oversight as we respond to a global pandemic at speed, but they are related to the problem of the Department for International Development being subsumed into the Foreign Office. They are problems that I warned about when the merger was first proposed, and I secured an urgent question on the merger in June 2020, but here we are, potentially dealing with some of those problems at a time when efficacy is key to successful delivery.
I welcome the fact that there remains a Select Committee dedicated to scrutinising international development work. I have already referred to its Members who are present, and I wholeheartedly commend their work, but it says everything about how the Government are treating international development that when I was preparing for the debate, it was not initially clear which Minister would be answering. That is because there is no longer a Minister responsible for international development. I am delighted to see the Minister for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean here today, and I look forward to her remarks, but it is not the same as having a Secretary of State or even a named Minister responsible for international development as a portfolio.
This is part of a broader narrative—a narrative of the Government stepping back from our commitments to the wider world. I am sure the Minister will say that we are better than other countries in this space, but that is just not good enough when we are stepping back and damaging our historical reputation as world leaders. As we all know, we have cut ODA spending from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%. It is an action, but not the right kind. Yes, there is a promise to restore spending at some point in the future, but there is no clarity about when that will be. The Chancellor was not as clear as he could have been, and an increase in the future does not help those in need now.
Cutting ODA spending hurts us all. The Minister will know the importance of having soft power on the ground, making friends and being trusted. Cutting spending, programmes and assistance simply does not do that. I have previously spoken in this place about the impact on the British Council. It is the same thing, because such actions break that trust. They destroy our friendships and reduce our power. We cannot be global Britain when the Government choose to step back.
I want to refer briefly to the fact that ODA cuts also hurt us at home. The University of St Andrews in my constituency of North East Fife receives funding for research projects through ODA spending. I have spoken previously about how cuts in that spending have put research projects at that university at risk. I am sure the Minister will say that our scientists have led the way in getting a vaccine in the first place, which is right, but what message does it send about how we value this research when its funding is at risk? Without that funding, will we be prepared for whatever comes next?
While we can improve how we are donating vaccines, this will not be the whole solution. COVAX does not aim to vaccinate whole countries. We will be safe only when countries are able to vaccinate their populations themselves. I have just spoken about the importance of incentivising and paying for research, but it is not contradictory to say that we must also engage with discussions about how low-income countries can manufacture their own vaccines.
The trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights waiver has been on the table for discussion for months. Why are the Government not at least engaging with these discussions? What do the Government plan to do to meet the covid vaccination need without such a waiver? If there is a plan about this, I would be keen to hear it, as donations will simply not be enough.
In a debate about global vaccine access, it would be remiss of me to talk only about covid. While covid has dominated the health agenda for the past two years, other diseases continue to spread. When it comes to routine immunisation services, the UK has a commendable record and is the largest sovereign donor to GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, but the pandemic has severely put back GAVI’s work.
In 2020 alone, 3 million more children missed out on a measles vaccination than in 2019. Yes, it is vital that low-income countries get urgent access to covid vaccines, but once that is done, we must tackle the backlog of missed immunisations. It is money well spent, as $1 spent on immunisation is estimated to save $21 in healthcare costs, low wages and lost productivity. Put simply, we keep people alive. Will the Minister today commit to maintaining the £1.65 billion donation to GAVI that the Government have committed to between 2021 and 2025?
Having praised our work with GAVI, the UK’s record with other vaccination programmes is sadly less laudable, with a 95% cut in our commitment to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The Minister might say that they committed £100 million as planned, but with only £5 million actually delivered, there is no other way to describe this as anything other than a brutal cut that will have a catastrophic impact on the delivery of services. Do we really want to see polio return in the 21st century? Is the legacy of battling covid-19 going to be tens of thousands of people infected with a disease that we were close to eradicating? Will the Minister commit to reinstating this funding as a matter of urgency?
It is very simple. What we have learned in the past two years is that health is a global issue. It is not just right to support worldwide health initiatives, but it benefits us too. When it comes to covid, we have seen that a global pandemic is exactly that: global.
Sadly, instead of supporting lower and middle-income countries, our Government have actively blocked them from making their own vaccines and have continued to oppose a waiver on intellectual property rights. I would therefore like to hear the Minister respond to the concerns that she and her colleagues are continuing to block solutions to the covid pandemic, given the severity of the crisis affecting both the NHS and the economy as a result of rapidly escalating levels of omicron cases. Denying lower and middle-income countries full, unfettered access to vaccines is incredibly short-sighted and will lead to a situation whereby our own population will remain at risk.
A global disease needs a united, global effort to eradicate it and reduce the risk of further mutations. An intellectual property rights waiver is therefore a vital way to achieve that, and we must follow the lead set by the Biden Administration in supporting that. The Government abolished the Department for International Development. That was extremely short-sighted and regressive, and will ultimately cost many, many lives. What happened was shameful. To put the situation into context, in a six-week period over November and December, the EU, UK and US all received more doses than African countries took stock of in the entire year. That is truly shocking.
Extensive covid-19 immunisation is a global public good. Although the Government are doing much good work in this area, I call on them to do even more, because it is so important to our health. It is a development issue; it has never been so obvious to everyone in this country that by helping others around the world, we help ourselves. Let us do it. Please read the motion that we all agreed.