‘Petty’ Brussels will be left behind as Britain prospers
DIRECTORS of AstraZeneca could be forgiven for expecting praise when, last summer, they agreed to manufacture at cost price a vaccine being developed by Oxford University. Here was a company acting in the global interest and doing so without the motivation of greed – a trait credited by the Prime Minister with speeding the production of vaccines in a private meeting with his MPs this week.
But AstraZeneca clearly hadn’t reckoned with Belgian MEP Phillippe Lamberts, who accused the company on Wednesday of a “culture of dishonesty, overpromising and underdelivering”. It summed up the attitude of many in the EU. A few hours later military police launched a raid on an AstraZeneca factory in Italy, expecting to find millions of doses secretly being packed off to Britain. They found millions of doses – but ones which were bound for the EU itself, as well as for developing countries.
The EU’s behaviour has descended into farce – if you can use that word to describe something with deadly consequences. Its original error of being late to order vaccines and of ordering too few was bad enough. But that has been compounded many times over by its subsequent threats to block exports – along with efforts to undermine public confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Millions of shots have sat unused in fridges over the past few weeks as citizens, put off by loose remarks on its efficacy and safety by Emmanuel Macron and others, have cancelled their vaccination appointments.
GIVEN that, you might well ask, why is the EU so upset about limitations in its supply? If they think it is so bad, why not let it go to countries that are more appreciative?
But that is to underestimate the EU’s belligerent politics. Many of its leaders simply cannot tolerate the thought that Brexit Britain got something right and its own 27 member states got something wrong. They are lashing out at someone, anyone, to blame. Poor AstraZeneca is the scapegoat.
Yes, the company has failed to produce as many doses of the vaccine as it would have liked to. But it hasn’t singled out the EU to deprive of supplies. The company’s UK plants, too, have suffered production problems, limiting the doses supplied in this country.This is not down to M. Lamberts’s “culture of dishonesty”; it is down to the difficulties in producing the biological agents that form the active ingredients of the vaccine. It is not like stamping out parts for a Volkswagen.
Britain is ahead in supplies, but not because of some underhand agreement. It put its money down earlier. By placing orders before it even knew if the vaccine would prove effective, it helped fund its development and production.
You CAN’T expect such a good deal if you do as the EU did and wait for the vaccine to prove its worth before trying to order large quantities at knockdown prices. As President Macron admitted yesterday, the EU lacked ambition.
Barking at AstraZeneca and threatening to ban exports of other vaccines won’t help the situation.All it will do is send a very powerful message to pharmaceutical companies, indeed to all manufacturers: think twice about setting up a plant in the EU, because you face having the European Commission seize control of your factories.
Britain can benefit from the EU’s bullying behaviour so long as Boris Johnson can avoid descending to the EU’s level. The Government could, if it wanted to, issue a counterthreat:
to block export of materials manufactured in Yorkshire for the Pfizer vaccine.
But it would be wrong to do so. It would choke off supply and delay vaccination for everyone. What the Government should do is invite pharmaceutical companies to relocate their manufacturing plants in Britain, assuring them that we will never block exports or indulge in vaccine nationalism in any way.
THE current crisis should be over within months. Not only will vaccine supplies improve as engineers learn how to produce them better, other vaccines will become available as they go through the approvals procedure. By autumn Britain should have large quantities of surplus vaccines which, quite rightly, we have already agreed to share with the developing world. The faster the whole world is vaccinated, the safer for everyone.
But industry will not forget in a hurry how the EU has behaved. The whole business has shown how Britain can prosper outside the EU by being everything the bloc is not: having an economy which is truly open and not engaging in petty acts of protectionism.
‘The EU is lashing out to blame and AstraZeneca is the scapegoat’