Clause 53 - Tax relief for expenditure on vaccine research etc
Finance Bill
9:45 am
Mr Paul Boateng (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Brent South, Labour)
The right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) has characteristically made a serious and significant point, but it is not the point that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs raised. The
right hon. Gentleman is not complaining about the inflexibility of the measure, but rightly probes what it might offer to meet the wider health challenges that he outlines. The WHO has been intimately involved in the development of the proposal. Representatives of that body sit with those of the industry and of the developing world on a committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, and it fully supports the measure.
The points made by the right hon. Gentleman were right. The WHO recognises 21 groups of infectious diseases, of which the three biggest killers in the developing world are TB, malaria and HIV/AIDS. That is why we have focused on them--they account for about 6 million deaths a year.
The hon. Gentleman made a point about grants. The focused relief has to be seen as part of a wider package of measures to alleviate the burden of disease in the developing world. As part of those measures, we have pledged $200 million to the global fund established to provide developing countries with the resources to purchase drugs and medicines for AIDS, TB and malaria, among other problems.
Extension of the relief to other diseases at the moment might dilute the incentive for companies to concentrate additional resources on research and development into the key diseases. We could not extend it to research into all the infectious diseases that afflict poorer people in the developing countries without substantially reducing the 50 per cent. rate at which the relief is given.
The right hon. Gentleman was right to point out the scope within the legislation to extend the powers by regulation. That is because the HIV virus mutates rapidly in response to changing conditions, as right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will know. Therefore, we have included a provision to allow us to add further strains to the list of those eligible for research relief as new forms of the virus develop and are identified by medical science.
The wider question of whether there might be scope for such relief in relation to animal diseases that pose a threat to public health globally or to the economy in the developing world is interesting. Using relief in that way will doubtless be monitored carefully to see what scope it has for use in other areas of public and development policy—subject always to there being a market failure, because that is what it is designed to address. The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and it is worthy of consideration.
I have spent quite some time with the industry both in Committee and bilaterally discussing the question of grants, but I have not heard the call being made for extensive grants in the terms described by the right hon. Gentleman, not least because the industry recognises the substantial contribution that we are making to the global fund. The industry also recognises that grants and development aid have to be directed to creating the infrastructure through which those goods might be marketed and distributed in the developing world. Without that, all of this would be a waste of space.
I hope that the Committee will feel able to give the clause, and its schedules, a fair wind.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 53 ordered to stand part of the Bill.