The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Brown attacks G7 over vaccine deal
Gordon Brown has said the G7 summit in Cornwall “will go down as a missed opportunity” due to the lack of a plan to deliver 11 billion vaccine doses.
The Labour former prime minister said the summit could be seen as an “unforgivable moral failure” due to the gap in vaccinations between rich and poor nations.
The group of seven leading industrialised nations have collectively agreed to provide a billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine in an effort to end the pandemic in 2022.
The UK is expected to contribute 100 million doses within 12 months as part of the pledge.
Speaking to Sky’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday programme, Mr Brown said: “When we needed 11 billion vaccines, we’ve only got offered a plan for one billion.”
He added: “I think this summit will also go down as an unforgivable moral failure, when the richest countries are sitting around the table with the power to do something about it.
“Now that we’ve discovered the vaccine, we have not delivered the comprehensive plan that will deliver vaccination by the middle of next year.”
Mr Brown continued: “We will have a huge problem of a division between the richest countries that are safe and the poorest countries that are not safe.
“But then the problem will come back to haunt the richest countries because we will have contagion spreading that will hurt even the people who are vaccinated because of mutations and variants.”
US president Joe Biden has already promised to donate half a billion Pfizer vaccines for 92 low and lower-middle income countries and the African Union.
But Boris Johnson rejected suggestions that just supplying a billion doses was a moral failure and was not enough to cover the needs of poorer countries.
The prime minister said: “This is another billion made up of a massive contribution by the United States and other friends.”
He said the UK’s contribution is another 100 million of the vaccines from now to next June.
He added: “We are going flat out and we are producing vaccines as fast as we can, and distributing them as fast as we can.”
The target to vaccinate the world by the end of next year will be done “very largely thanks to the efforts of the countries who have come here today”, according to Mr Johnson.