Examination of Witnesses (Questions 520-525)
Monday 30 June 2003
RT HON
BARONESS AMOS
AND MRS
DIANNA MELROSE
Q520 Mr Colman: Can I move us on
to TRIPS, Secretary of State. You mentioned a couple of times
you thought the important thing about the CAP decision last weekend
was that it enabled us to potentially do a deal with the Americans
on TRIPS. Would you like to unpack that a bit more and perhaps
in connection with that say what the view has been from the British
or the European pharmaceutical industry, how they see the negotiations
going forward to make sure there is a nailed-down agreement at
Cancún on TRIPS?
Baroness Amos: What we are trying
to do is get the US Government to agree to the text which all
WTO members could agree to, the text which was put out on 16 December
last year, which all WTO members could agree to apart from the
United States. My understanding is that the United States were
very much looking, partly as a negotiating tactic, for some movement
from the European Union on some of the other issues on the agenda,
which is why I hope the agreement on CAP reform we have come to
will mean there is some movement from there. They also have some
concerns because of lobbying they have had from some of their
major pharmaceutical companies. Here in the UK, Clare Short, as
you know, had chaired a working party on access to medicines and
we very much had the industry on-side I think with respect to
this although they wanted to see a couple of caveats. The US particularly
want only three diseases to come under this—drugs which
have an impact on HIV/AIDS, on malaria and TB—developing
countries want to see a wider range of diseases being covered.
That is one of the points of difference between the United States,
ourselves and developing countries. As I say, we had the working
party. On TRIPS there were some issues which were raised by the
companies which were to do not so much with coverage with respect
to drugs and with limiting them to those three areas, but to do
with countries wanting to move into the more lifestyle drugs—Viagra
and so on. We feel it would be possible to put some constraints
on which would deal with that and we have been looking at that
and we have been talking about that. We think there are some ways
round this. The other thing would be that if a developing country
did actually break the rules, it would be pursued vigorously through
the WTO dispute settlement mechanism—again we do not have
a problem with that, if we were able to reach agreement within
the WTO and one of the developing countries broke the rules we
would have no problem with them being vigorously tackled within
the context of WTO, because what we want to see is movement more
generally on trade.
Q521 Mr Colman: Are we having discussions
with India or Brazil in terms of perhaps brokering an agreement,
given they were the countries which were most difficult?
Baroness Amos: We are having discussions
with India and Brazil but also with a number of developing countries
who want this very much, encouraging them to lobby other countries
about what they want, but also about the safeguards they are prepared
to put in place. If we are able to get the developed countries
to understand the safeguards to be put in place and developing
countries are happy with that, we may get some movement.
Q522 Mr Battle: Could I ask about
another acronym which is causing controversy and that is GATS,
the General Agreement on Trade and Services. I recently heard
someone ask, "Is it not a disgrace that the Government is
pushing all developing countries to sell off their council housing
as happened in Britain." It was an interesting remark but
I do think there is a tension between those who think that GATS
will be development-friendly, as the Government does, and those
who believe it will undermine their services. What is the Government
doing to clarify the interpretation, the meaning, the ambiguity
around Article 6.4 of GATS, to ensure the core regulations are
not seen by the World Trade Organisation in its interpretation
as "excessively burdensome", which is the phrase they
use. What is the Government doing to convince, in other words,
developing countries that GATS is in their interests?
Baroness Amos: Can I say a couple
of general things first because I think there are some misunderstandings
about GATS and the way they are negotiated. They are very much
negotiated as bilateral agreements. It is not the WTO conducting
a negotiation or an agreement as a whole but two countries sitting
down, so it is very much a bottom-up approach, and we really need
to get that across to not only NGOs but developing countries themselves.
Again it is one of these capacity issues. On GATS Article 6.4,
it calls on WTO members to "develop any necessary disciplines
covering measures relating to domestic regulation of services".
Our view is that the fear which has been expressed is unfounded
and that is for a number of reasons. All WTO members recognise
the need for services liberalisation to be underpinned by an appropriate
regulatory framework and everyone has agreed that. The work programme
is only addressing technical standards, qualifications and licensing,
not everything to do with domestic regulation. Business, as I
understand it, is also not arguing for the removal of regulation
and recognises consumers need protection through proper regulation.
I think you are absolutely right, we need to get these messages
across. I also think we need to simplify these messages because
as someone who has come relatively new to this, I had to read
this quite a lot of times before I understood exactly what it
meant.
Mr Battle: I think we are all in the
same boat.
Q523 Chairman: Something I detest
is all these different coloured boxes. I have lost track of all
the colours. Secretary of State, are you going to Cancún?
Baroness Amos: Yes, I will.
Q524 Chairman: Perhaps it is also
important, and maybe this is not a point which has been reinforced
sufficiently, that Cancún is not the be-all and end-all,
it is just a step in the process. I have not yet had a chance
to exchange notes with other colleagues who were lobbied by the
Trade Justice Movement last week but I get the impression that
the tendency is to think Cancún was it, and it may just
be, depending how the US respond to such things as TRIPS and agricultural
reform, that not a lot may happen at Cancún, but from a
development point of view we may just have to be patient on that
and see this as a longer story, if that is the case.
Baroness Amos: I think that is
true. I think the concern is, because we missed the deadlines
on agriculture and on TRIPS, there are now huge expectations which
have been placed on Cancún, and also the timetable is so
tight. We are looking for progress by the end of 2004 to conclude
negotiations by 1 January 2005, so we actually have not got a
huge amount of time, and if we miss deadlines as we have done
on agriculture, for example, it means we do not even begin to
discuss some of the other issues and everybody sees the timetable
running out by which we have to reach some kind of agreement.
That is why I think there is such a huge expectation about Cancu«n.
But I entirely agree with you, it is but a stage in the process
and in a way we have to dampen down expectations about what may
or may not be achieved at the Cancu«n Ministerial.
Q525 Chairman: Secretary of State,
thank you very much for coming. I know you have had a busy time
reading to your brief and then a visit to Iraq, so we are very
grateful to you for spending time this afternoon to go through
both concerns on Iraq and Cancu«n, and we look forward to
meeting you in October to go into issues of trade and development
and so on in further detail.
Baroness Amos: Thank you. Can
I also thank the Committee for changing the date on which I gave
evidence on Iraq so I gave it after I had visited rather than
before.
Chairman: Thank you.
|
