TWO former Tory ministers who opposed removing drug companies’ intellectual property rights for the production of Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic had financial interests in “big pharma” firms producing the life-saving vaccines, a report revealed today.

Failure to waive the rights prevented worldwide production of vaccines while protecting the companies’ profits as hundreds of thousands of people across the globe were dying from the virus.

The report by health campaign groups STOPAIDS and Just Treatment estimates that wider access to vaccines could have saved 1.3 million lives.

Tory MP Amanda Milling held shares in AstraZeneca while she was the minister responsible for global health at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) from September  2021 to September 2022, a report shows.

Party colleague Ranil Jayawardena, who was international trade minister from May 2020 to September 2022, held shares in PepTCell in 2021, it said. A subsidiary of PepTCell sought to commercialise coronavirus vaccines from 2020 onwards.

A call to waive the intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines was supported by over 100 countries and more than 170 former world leaders and Nobel laureates during the pandemic. 

However, a limited compromise agreement was reached in March 2022 after a handful of governments, including Britain’s, opposed the proposal.

Both AstraZeneca and Ms Milling opposed the waiver. She said in January 2022: “There is no evidence that the intellectual property rights waiver would help to save lives.”

Mr Jayawardena said in response to a letter from groups campaigning for access to medicines that the waiver would undermine the intellectual property framework.

At the time, in March 2022, fewer than 14 per cent of people in low-income countries had received a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, compared with 77 per cent of people in high-income nations.

Izzie Jani-Friend of Just Treatment said: “I am ashamed to learn that Amanda Milling, a minister who opposed proposals to openly share vaccine technology globally, held shares in AstraZeneca. 

“Whose interests was she prioritising? Blocking these proposals helped sustain a vaccine apartheid globally, while big pharma and its cheerleaders hoarded technology.”

STOPAIDS and Just Treatment said that a systemic lack of transparency and extensive use of trade secrets by large pharmaceutical companies gave the former ministers undue influence over government decision-making and prevented public accountability, which probably contributed to keeping access to Covid-19 vaccines unequal.

The two MPs were invited to comment.