Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton]

This is a global pandemic and I commend the work of the Government in the vaccination programme that we have. I look to my constituency and the tremendous work that Walsall Manor Hospital and the Oak Park centre are doing. Alongside that, let me reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are absolutely committed to equitable access. The global Gavi summit that we held earlier last year was just one example of the leading part that the UK Government are taking when it comes to the fight against the covid-19 pandemic.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

The longer the pandemic rages, the more damage will be done to ordinary families around the world who are suffering from a crisis they did not create. We have an opportunity to save countless lives and livelihoods here in the UK and abroad by playing our part in co-operating with other countries and using our influence to bring them together. As we have seen during the pandemic, the Government have consistently struggled with transparency and accountability, so will the United Kingdom fulfil the ask made yesterday by the director general of the World Health Organisation and make public all bilateral contracts that they have signed for covid-19 vaccines, including on volumes, pricing and delivery dates, so that we can deal with production bottlenecks and ensure equitable access to the vaccine, giving us all the best chance of beating this deadly virus?

[Wendy Morton]

I do not accept the hon. Lady’s assertions when it comes to transparency. We, the UK, are absolutely at the forefront of multilateral efforts on ensuring equitable global access. If we look at what the UK Government have done, we see that we have contributed to CEPI—the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations—in the early part of this pandemic and to FIND, the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics. We have contributed to Gavi and to the COVAX AMC. This is all about helping the world’s poorest. We have also flexed a lot of our normal aid work to help countries that are suffering from the pandemic, because we know that, as well as the primary impact of covid-19, there are many secondary impacts.