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TWN Info Service
on WTO and Trade Issues (Nov20/31) Almost 100 UK parliamentarias have urge the UK government to support the adoption of the decision text proposed by India and South Africa for “Waiver from certain provisions of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19” (Waiver Proposal). The aim of this Waiver is to prevent intellectual property (IP) barriers from restricting access to COVID-19 medicines, tools, devices and vaccines to ensure all health systems are equipped with the health technologies they need to end this pandemic. The letter is available
at 231120
LM et al to SoS for IT and SoS for BEIS re TRIPS Waiver Proposal With best wishes, Third World Network LAYLA MORAN MP The Rt Hon. Elizabeth
Truss MP The Rt Hon. Alok Sharma
MP 23 November 2020 Dear Liz and Alok, As a cross party group of parliamentarians, we urge the UK Government to support the adoption of the decision text proposed by India and South Africa for “Waiver from certain provisions of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19” (Waiver Proposal). The aim of this Waiver is to prevent intellectual property (IP) barriers from restricting access to COVID-19 medicines, tools, devices and vaccines to ensure all health systems are equipped with the health technologies they need to end this pandemic. We are deeply concerned by the lack of support for the Waiver in the UK representative’s statement at the recent TRIPS Council meeting on 15th October for the following reasons:
It is against this backdrop that the Indian and South African Governments asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the 15th October 2020 to allow all countries to choose to neither grant nor enforce patents and other intellectual property (IP) related to COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies for the duration of the pandemic, until global herd immunity is achieved. Specifically the Waiver Proposal applies to Section 1 (copyrights and related rights), 4 (industrial design), 5 (patents) and 7 (protection of undisclosed information) of Part II of the TRIPS Agreement. The proposed waiver would be applicable only to COVID-19. It does not suggest a waiver from all TRIPS obligations, nor does it suggest a waiver beyond what is needed for COVID-19 prevention, containment and treatment. The historical and recent actions by pharmaceutical corporations shows that we cannot rely on their exclusive rights and limited voluntary actions to end this global pandemic. And even though there are existing public health safeguards within the TRIPS Agreement (TRIPS flexibilities) there are often territorial and procedural restrictions that mean they can only be applied on a product-by-product basis or country-by-country basis, making this time consuming and difficult for countries to collaborate around research and manufacturing. Instead we need a more immediate global solution based on collaboration and solidarity with the overall aim of increasing manufacturing capacity to ensure sufficient supplies of vaccines, treatments and other health products to enable all countries to tackle COVID-19. By removing IP barriers the Waiver proposal will help this to happen; not only will it speed up research and development and maximise manufacturing capacity it will also make products more affordable by enabling generic competition to help drive down prices. Over recent months the UK has led calls for global collaboration and solidarity to end this pandemic and has supported calls for COVID-19 medical products to be treated as “global public goods”. We welcome the UK’s contribution of £500m to the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Advance Market Commitment (AMC), as well as an additional £71m for the COVAX Facility. However, the COVAX Facility can only be truly effective at managing global access to future vaccines if there are enough doses to go around and this is beyond the capacities of a handful of companies. We are only at the beginning of tackling this pandemic and we need a longer-term solution that focuses on enabling a rapid scaling-up of production by multiple manufacturers across many countries to meet global demand. Access can’t be an after-thought, we have learned from the AIDS crisis that allowing intellectual property rights to take precedence over human rights will have a catastrophic impact. We can’t allow the same mistakes to be made again. Not only will artificially restricting supply through IP monopolies lead to huge loss of life it will also exacerbate an already spiralling economic crises on a national and global scale. We therefore strongly request that the UK Government support the proposed IP Waiver at the upcoming World Trade Organisation meetings to ensure all countries have access to the tools they need to protect their populations and end this pandemic for all. Your Sincerely,
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