The role of the legal framework provided by the TRIPS Agreement has and will continue to provide innovators the confidence to invest in developing health products and technologies and to form collaborative partnerships. This is evidenced with over 300 successful voluntary licensing and technology transfer partnerships, which are contributing to the production of approximately 1.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses per month.

We encourage industry to continue forming voluntary licensing and technology transfer partnerships. Working with commercial partners within the existing international IP framework is the most effective way to make use of global capacity to produce life-saving medicines at pace.

The Government has agreed to keep confidential any dispute(s) that arise with Pfizer because of commercial sensitivity.

Alongside our G7 partners, the UK is committed to working internationally on efforts to support our ambitious shared goal of vaccinating the world by the end of 2022. This includes efforts to increase vaccine supply by working with suppliers to boost manufacturing, and develop more sustainable approaches to support COVAX as well as wider future pandemic preparedness.

Building vaccine manufacturing capacity is a long term, capital intensive, and high risk endeavour that will require sustained partnerships for supporting viable business models. We are working with the COVAX Supply Chains and Manufacturing Task Force, multilateral, and industry partners to expand quality and affordable vaccine supplies, smooth supply chains, support better information sharing and match making to increase trusted partnerships for manufacturing. The UK has funded McKinsey to scope opportunities for increasing vaccine manufacturing in Africa, and supported the African Union's Africa Manufacturing summit in April this year. We were also the largest funder of Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in 2020, which is leading work internationally to increase vaccine manufacturing capacity.