Johnson called on to reveal any exchanges with pharma lobbyists over Covid vaccine deals

UK prime minister Boris Johnson is being called on by a group of cross-party MPs to publish any and all of his exchanges with pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists.

A joint statement signed by 24 MPs and seven patient advocacy organisations is asking Johnson, alongside ministers and senior civil servants to publish all email, text and WhatsApp messages exchanged with lobbyists from pharmaceutical companies.

Labour, Scottish National Party, Alba, Liberal Democrat, Green, and Independent MPs and peers have signed the statement, including Jeremy Corbyn MP, Diane Abbott MP, Caroline Lucas MP, Zarah Sultana MP, Richard Burgon MP, Clive Lewis MP, Kenny MacAskill MP, and Baroness Sheehan, the Liberal Democrat International Development spokesperson in the House of Lords.

Patient advocacy and vaccine equity organisations have also signed the statement, including Global Justice Now, Just Treatment, StopAIDS, Frontline AIDS, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines UK, Students for Global Health, and Nurses United UK.

Following scandals with Greensill Capital and James Dyson, the signatories wish to understand if private lobbying was the influence for the UK’s decision to block a temporary waiver of Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) at the WTO proposed by India and South Africa.

The US also opposed the proposed waiver, and an open letter was sent to president Biden urging him to support the temporary waiver of IP rules related to Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. The waiver would help scale-up the manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines and therapies around the globe, as companies would have access to the IP needed to effectively develop these products.

In the latest statement, MPs and patient advocacy groups note that manufacturing factories that can produce vaccines are now “sitting idle”, as restrictive IP rules are stopping the production of Covid-19 vaccines due to a small number of pharmaceutical companies owning the patents to those products.

“There must be public scrutiny of any corporate influence over the government’s domestic and international vaccine policy to ensure that no preferential access has been given and no secret deals have been made using taxpayers money without accountability or oversight. We cannot allow wealthy corporate executives to have access and influence when it comes at the cost of the lives of people around the world whose voices are being ignored by the PM,” part of the statement reads.

Heidi Chow, senior policy and campaigns manager at Global Justice Now, said: “The UK’s opposition to an intellectual property waiver on Covid-19 vaccines is utterly indefensible. With a real scandal emerging over big business’s preferential access to this government, we must ask: is the UK’s reckless opposition to a patent waiver because of undeclared big pharma lobbying? We have a right to know if the Prime Minister has thrown low and middle income countries under the bus to protect private profits.”

Diarmaid McDonald, lead organiser at Just Treatment, said: “Boris Johnson hailed corporate ‘greed’ as the cause of the UK’s vaccine success but that greed is in fact worsening the pandemic, putting millions more lives at risk - including NHS patients. We need to fully understand what is motivating the government to consistently side with big pharma to oppose measures that could break unfair monopolies, scale up vaccine production and save lives. Sadly, it seems we may only get an answer to that question if we can read the PM’s text exchanges with the industry. Democracy and the pandemic response make their publication essential.”

EPM has reached out to the prime minister for a statement.