Sorry Ellers, just like Matt Hancock... Not quite right
Covid vaccine decisions have little to do with Brexit
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James Kane
02 December 2020
The UK has managed the feat of becoming the first Western country to approve a Covid vaccine. But Brexit isn’t the reason why and it could make the roll-out harder, writes James Kane
Shortly after the announcement that the UK’s medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), had approved the first Covid vaccine to be rolled out, health secretary Matt Hancock asserted that it was “because of Brexit” that the UK had been able to do this ahead of its EU neighbours. The government also explained its refusal to participate in the joint EU vaccine purchasing scheme earlier this year by saying that it could secure doses more quickly itself. Others, however, have claimed that Brexit will actually make the rollout of the UK’s vaccination programme more difficult. Who is right?
The UK will be faster off the vaccine mark than its neighbours
The government has stated that the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will be administered in the week of 7 December. This makes it the first Western country to approve the widespread rollout of a vaccine: the US is likely to follow in a week or so, while the EU is unlikely to approve any Covid vaccine for use until the start of 2021. At a time when hundreds of people are still dying of coronavirus daily, the UK authorities’ speed in approving a vaccine could well save lives.
The UK is also better supplied with vaccines than its EU neighbours. The UK authorities have bought more vaccine doses per head of population than almost any other country in the world, with contracts signed for over five doses per Briton. Only Canada and the US have bought more. The EU’s joint procurement scheme has acquired only three doses for each European citizen.
The UK could have followed the same course of vaccine action if it were an EU member
That said, none of these successes can be chalked up to Brexit. As the chief executive of the MHRA swiftly pointed out, Mr Hancock was wrong to say that the UK could approve the vaccine early because it was no longer subject to EU rules. The MHRA’s decision was taken in accordance with the relevant EU legislation, which allows member states to grant temporary authorisation for a medicinal product in response to the spread of infectious diseases (among others). [1] This legislation still applies to the UK until the end of the transition period. Any EU member state could have used the same provision of the legislation to approve the vaccine. They decided not to for political and technical reasons, not legal ones.
Similarly, the member states were in no way obliged to take part in the EU’s joint vaccine procurement scheme. The EU has very limited competences for public health under its founding treaties: it can take action only to “support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States”. The EU member states in this case voluntarily decided to opt into the joint procurement scheme. If one or more of them had decided to follow the UK’s path and procure its own vaccines, no one would have stopped them.
