Britain must build own vaccine manufacturing capability, says Matt Hancock
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Former health secretary told Covid inquiry an onshore facility was ‘critical’ in preparation for future pandemic. Britain must build its own vaccine manufacturing capability as a “critical” part of preparing for a future pandemic, the former health secretary Matt Hancock has told the Covid inquiry.
Hancock, a central figure in the UK’s response to the crisis, said the pandemic demonstrated the “vital need” for a sovereign onshore facility to ensure the country was able to produce and distribute vaccine doses as soon as regulators gave the green light.
In evidence to the inquiry on Thursday, Hancock described Britain’s vaccine research as “excellent”, but warned the country was “weak” when it came to facilities able to manufacture doses on the scale they would be needed. Under questioning from Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, Hancock said there was an assumption in the UK that it did not matter where vaccine manufacturing and “fill and finish” – when doses are put into vials and labelled – happened in the world, because in normal times there were no pressures on the system.
But in a pandemic, he said, “the moment a vaccine gets signed off, there’s going to be enormous demand, and geopolitical-level demand for this, and therefore having that manufacture and fill and finish onshore, physically within the UK, is critical in the way that it simply isn’t in normal times”.
Hancock went on to criticise Europe for behaving “extremely badly” over distribution, a reference to a spat that arose between the UK and Brussels over access to the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. After Keith warned him that UK-EU relations were beyond the scope of the inquiry, Hancock said it was important to look at, to ensure “we don’t fall into that trap in the future”.
