Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 6
Fifth Report - Global Health, Global Britain
Published 30 Sep 2021
Paragraph 17
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Foreign Affairs Committee Global health security All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Taiwan’s impressive response to covid-19 illustrates that its exclusion from WHO forums risks harming global health security, making it harder to exchange information with Taiwan and learn from its experiences. In a deeply interconnected world, where the next pandemic could emerge from any region, we cannot afford to arbitrarily remove key partners from global health forums. We were disappointed that the Minister responsible for global health security was not aware of the UK’s position on this topic, which suggests that the issue may not be getting the attention it deserves within the FCDO. We recommend that the Government builds on the momentum of the joint G7 statement supporting Taiwan’s participation in the WHO with a renewed push for its attendance at the 2022 World Health Assembly.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, Fifth Report - Global Health, Global Britain (HC 200), paragraph 17, 30 September 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 16 December 2021 (deadline 30 November 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government sets out action across the Committee's recommendations, supporting a pandemic treaty and WHO reform while saying it is "yet to see evidence" for a single, non-renewable term for the WHO Director-General.
- On WHO funding, it says it has led calls in the WHO working group for more flexible, reliable funding and for an increase in Assessed Contributions, and it announced a £340m, four-year flexible funding programme that is "now live".
- On vaccines, it says it will "donate a total of 100 million doses by June 2022", with 80% of doses going through COVAX.
- On the BBC World Service, it states that the BBC is editorially independent, so additional services to tackle disinformation are "for the BBC World Service to decide". It cites an £8 million uplift for 2021-22, of which £3 million was for disinformation.
- On aid cuts, it describes the reduction to 0.5% of GNI as temporary, saying it will return to 0.7% "when the fiscal situation allows". It will publish a Health Systems Strengthening Position Paper before the end of the year, with decisions on publishing a global health strategic framework "in due course".