HC Deb 13 January 2004 vol 416 cc645-6W
Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development (1) what assessment he has made of the benefits achieved to date for developing countries from the World Trade Organisation agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights and Public Health;. [146592]

(2) whether it is his policy to support compulsory licensing for export of all drugs for life-threatening diseases to least-developed countries. [146593]

Mr. Mike O'Brien

I have been asked to reply.

We welcome the Decision of the General Council of the WTO on 30 August 2003 which resolves the outstanding issue from the Doha Ministerial Declaration on the Trade-Related Property Rights Agreement (the TRIPS Agreement) and Public Health—the issue of how countries with insufficient or no manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical sector can make effective use of the compulsory licensing provisions within the WTO TRIPS Agreement.

The Decision effectively extends to countries with minimal or no domestic manufacturing capacity the existing flexibility within the TRIPS Agreement to issue compulsory licenses by allowing other countries to produce and export to them. The original TRIPS Agreement allowed for compulsory licensing only where such licensing was primarily for domestic use.

We are currently considering with our European partners how best to implement the new Decision both at EU and at UK level. Beyond our own implementation, we will monitor the wider implementation of the Decision in due course in order to ensure that the Decision is implemented effectively and delivers the intended benefits to developing countries. However, it is too early to make a substantive assessment of the benefits achieved to date for developing countries from the new Decision.

In the context of implementing the new Decision, the Government has supported the principle that pharmaceutical companies in developed countries should be able to act as suppliers under the new arrangements—which would include the export of drugs for life-threatening diseases to least-developed countries—if they so choose.