3. What discussions has the Welsh Government had with the UK Government regarding waiving the patents of COVID vaccines? OQ57377

Llywydd, the Welsh Government supports plans to relax intellectual property rights so that patented vaccines can be made available to low-income countries to help mitigate pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We have conveyed that view directly to the UK Government as responsibility for intellectual property rights remains a reserved matter.

Thank you. First, I'd like to refer Members and the public to my declared shares that I still have in AstraZeneca, although not for much longer. I'm disappointed that neither AstraZeneca nor Pfizer have responded to my request for an explanation as to why, in the middle of a global pandemic, these multinational drug companies haven't waived their patents on these life-saving vaccines. There is, of course, a precedent to this, for waiving the patents on HIV drugs when Nelson Mandela exposed their failure to do that, which caused a global outcry. In the United States, the National Institutes of Health is taking Moderna to court. Are you aware of any plans by the UK Government to take AstraZeneca to court to force them to do the right thing, given that no-one will be safe from COVID until enough people have been vaccinated across the world to suppress COVID to manageable levels?

Well, Llywydd, I'm not aware of any such actions by the UK Government, and I will be very surprised indeed if they were prepared to take any, because they continue to block proposals for waiving intellectual property rights at the World Trade Organization. I know that Jenny Rathbone will be very well aware that it's a year—more than a year now—since South Africa and India proposed a temporary waiver for intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines and took that proposition to the World Trade Organization. In May of this year, the United States declared themselves in favour of such a waiver, and well over 100 countries have now put their weight behind that. A relatively small number of countries around the world continues to block those discussions, and the UK Government is one of them. The WTO last met at the end of October, and I'm afraid that the reports were that negotiations on a waiver are deadlocked and direction-less because of that handful of countries. That is why I have written to the Prime Minister urging him to remove the United Kingdom from that position; that we should support the position put forward by South Africa and India, but by the United States as well, because that would unlock the position where we wouldn't be reliant upon the goodwill of individual pharmaceutical companies, but there would be a concerted across-the-globe position where intellectual property rights would not be a barrier to getting the rest of the world vaccinated. I'm reminded of what the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said only a few days ago: that the well-resourced west is playing Russian roulette with COVID-19, and that while we don't make the effort we need to make to make sure that everybody is vaccinated, somewhere in the world, a variant is brewing that may be one that completely escapes vaccine protection, that will be more serious than the versions we currently are dealing with. It's in everybody's interest, exactly in the way that Jenny Rathbone said, to make sure that the whole of the world's population has the protection of vaccination, and a temporary waiver on intellectual property rights would be one important step in helping to secure that outcome.

I do know, as well, responding to some of the—. Can you hear me, Llywydd? My visual has disappeared. 

We can hear you, Russell, although I can't see you at this point. Ah, yes, you're back on the screen. Carry on. 

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, I'm aware that the UK has donated the majority of any vaccines that are surplus to the UK, of course, to COVAX to support developing countries, but I understand something different to you, First Minister, in terms of World Trade Organization members' developing views on a proposed waiver of some of the provisions of the trade-related aspect of intellectual property rights agreement to tackle COVID-19. The UK Government, as I understand it, is actively engaging positively in that. But can I ask, First Minister, do you foresee any negative issues regarding waiving the patents of vaccinations, what are the unintended consequences of that, and how can these issues be overcome?

First of all, can I say that in my letter to the Foreign Secretary on this matter earlier in the year, and more recently to the Prime Minister, I was at pains to say how strongly the Welsh Government supports the actions that the UK Government has led in relation to the COVAX programme and the efforts that the UK Government has made to lead action across the world in that regard? So, I want to acknowledge that and to repeat it this afternoon.

What are the downsides of a temporary waiver on intellectual property rights? Well, I think the main one is that while I think it is a necessary thing to do, by itself it is not a sufficient thing to do, because there will be countries that simply lack the infrastructure to use the intellectual property that will then be available to them. Sometimes the intellectual property side is described as having the recipe. Well, if you don't have a cooker, you don't have the pots and pans and you don't have everything else you need, you can't turn the recipe into a usable product. That is why, in the very modest way that the Welsh Government has been able to offer assistance, our assistance in places like Namibia and Uganda, for example, has focused on making sure that we assist those places to put into place those infrastructure things that allow countries to make use of vaccines as vaccines become available, because if you don't have trained nurses, or you don't have vaccine centres, or you don't have personal protective equipment, then even if you have the vaccine, you can't make those vaccines work for your local population. If there is an argument about a downside to a patent waiver, I think that is the only one that I would place much credence on. It's that, by itself, if you don't have everything else you need to make a vaccine programme effective, having intellectual property rights on vaccines waived doesn't guarantee that you've got everything you need on the ground to deliver such a programme.

First Minister, Boris Johnson has told people living in the UK that two vaccines are no longer enough to protect against the omicron variant. In Africa, 70 per cent of front-line health workers haven't had one dose. That, as we've been discussing, is in large part because of the intransigence of Governments like the UK and Switzerland, blocking attempts to waive patents on vaccines, when, as you've said, First Minister, even the President of big pharma-friendly USA, Joe Biden, is in favour of a waiver. Do you believe it's the case, First Minister, that the UK Government's policy of blocking this attempt to vaccinate the world not only cruelly and unnecessarily endangers lives abroad, but also puts lives in danger here in the UK from dangerous variants that are likely to develop in countries less able to obtain vaccines?

I entirely agree with the substantive point that Delyth Jewell is making. None of us is safe until all of us are safe. And that's the case for making sure that rich countries like the United Kingdom play our part—our full part—in assisting the rest of the world. It isn't simply a matter of generosity, it is a matter of enlightened self-interest. But until we can get the rest of the world in that position, then exactly as Delyth Jewell said, and as I quoted earlier from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, somewhere in the world another variant will be brewing and, next time, we might not be so fortunate that the defences we've built up so far will be as effective in responding to that variant as we've been able to mobilise defences against the alpha variant, the delta variant and now the next great effort to deal with the omicron variant. The whole of the world needs to be protected in order that each one of us can be protected.