Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential for pharmaceutical companies to maintain their patent and intellectual property rights while allowing vaccine production to scale up in the global south, including where vaccine access is the lowest.

Intellectual Property rights have underpinned innovators’ confidence to form over 300 partnerships - an unprecedented number - which have contributed to the production and dissemination of vaccines and other health products and technologies across the world.

Licensing and technology transfer partnerships have made real, positive impacts on vaccine delivery; examples include AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute of India, Pfizer-BioNTech and BIOVAC in South Africa.