Photograph: John Cairns/University of Oxford/PA
UK-registered patents and intellectual property rights on vaccines and medicines would immediately be waived in a pandemic under a proposed amendment to the health and social care bill that is backed by the People’s Vaccine Alliance.
The amendment, tabled in the House of Lords by the Labour peer, Shami Chakrabarti, is expected to be debated this week. It would seek to avoid a future shortfall of vaccines in poorer countries as has occurred during the coronavirus pandemic.
Describing the situation as “immoral”, Chakrabarti said: “We are failing because of insufficient sharing of our vaccine supply and not allowing generic vaccine production in the global south.
“Some of the arguments against are patronising, verging on the racist – that the south is incapable of production and so on. Yet a report before Christmas suggested that there were over 100 manufacturers in Africa, Asia and Latin America who – with knowledge-sharing and patent waiving – could produce MRNA vaccines. At the height of devastation in India, the Serum Institute was producing vaccines to export to Europe whilst bodies were floating down the Ganges.”
Experts blamed the emergence of the Omicron variant on the failure to vaccinate the world. The UK, among other wealthier nations, has been accused of hoarding vaccines and opposing waiving the multinational Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) agreement during the pandemic to protect big pharma.
Under the amendment, upon the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring a pandemic, the health and social care secretary would immediately have to waive intellectual property rights relating to vaccines and medicines where necessary to combat the pandemic internationally. They would also be required to support and implement any proposal to temporarily waive aspects of the WTO’s Trips agreement.
The amendment is also signed by Labour peers Doreen Lawrence and Paul Boateng, and Chakrabarti says it also has cross-bench support.
The amendment would also dictate that, when the government invests in health research or development, it would receive a proportionate share of any resulting intellectual property and profits, which it would be obliged to reinvest in further public health-related research.
Research carried out prior to the pandemic showed that the NHS was spending more than £1bn each year on medicines that the public had helped fund.
Chakrabarti said that the bulk of investment into the early and riskiest research and development comes from public and philanthropic sources (97% for the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine).
“Ordinary people and small businesses have made all sorts of awful compromises to rights and freedoms in the pandemic but big pharma, much like big tech, has only been enriched,” she said.
Saoirse Fitzpatrick, advocacy manager at StopAids, part of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said: “There is a growing realisation that if public money is funding the development of vaccines and medicines then there needs to be public stewardship over that process to make sure products are accessible and affordable at the end. And in cases where public money hasn’t played a role, we need to be using all the legal tools available to get access to those treatments and vaccines at the best possible price for the NHS and patients around the world.”
A government spokesperson said: “The innovation we need to tackle Covid-19 is facilitated by the existing international IP framework, and the Trips waiver would dismantle this framework despite there not being evidence for needing to do so.
“While we recognise and share concerns regarding the level of vaccination in some parts of the world, we are working on tackling the underlying issues including manufacturing and supply constraints, pressure on health systems, and vaccine confidence.”
