Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 8
Fifth Report - Global Health, Global Britain
Published 30 Sep 2021
Paragraph 28
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)
When we launched this inquiry, in October 2020, it was not known whether there would ever be effective vaccines against covid-19. Today, less than a year later, all UK adults have been offered full immunisation, and 41 percent of the global population has received at least one dose. This is a huge achievement for global scientific cooperation. The UK has made an important contribution, and the UK- backed AstraZeneca vaccine is responsible for the majority of COVAX vaccinations in lower-income countries. However, these achievements are undermined by the failure to ensure anything close to global equity in access. While democratic governments have responded to the needs of their electorates, it is now time to turn our attention overseas. Promoting rapid vaccine access globally is not just morally right, but is clearly in the UK’s interest. It is necessary in order to build prosperous Global Health, Global Britain 23 and healthy societies, preserve the safe travel that underpins the global economy, fend off the threat of new variants, and counter autocracies that are using vaccines to gain influence.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, Fifth Report - Global Health, Global Britain (HC 200), paragraph 28, 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".