Health activists demand the UK-India Trade Deal negotiator to resign

Health activists demand the UK-India Trade Deal negotiator to resign

Date: 18 March 2023
Campaigns: Pharma

Harjinder Kang’s 30-year career with AstraZeneca presents risk that negotiations will prioritise corporate pharma interests, global coalition says

Over 200 health organisations and community groups, including Global Justice Now, have today called on the UK’s Chief Negotiator for the UK-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to resign amidst lack of transparency from the UK Government that provisions from a leaked chapter of the FTA that would undermine generic drug manufacturing haven’t been cut from the negotiations.

In a letter to UK Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch signed by a coalition from over 40 countries including the UK, access to medicines campaigners demand a new, independent Chief Negotiator without ties to the corporate pharmaceutical industry. The coalition states that the appointment of current Chief Negotiator Harjinder Kang, who has previously worked with a pharmaceutical corporation for nearly three decades, ‘runs counter to the need for impartiality and independence.’

UK demands in a previously leaked chapter of the FTA appear to be a ‘wish list’ of the pharmaceutical industry. They include closing the right to challenge unjustified patents on medicines before they are granted and extending monopoly patents beyond 20 years, as well as watering down transparency on patent application status.

India accounts for 20% of the world’s generic medicine supply and so any changes to intellectual property policies in India would have an impact on the supply and access to these globally. Campaigners also cite the historic positive impact of Indian generics; including lowering HIV drug prices by 99% from the year 2000 to today.

 

Tim Bierley, Pharma Campaigns Manager at Global Justice Now, said:

“Putting a pharma industry boss in charge of trade negotiations sums up the UK’s approach to health and trade: do whatever pharmaceutical shareholders demand, whatever the impact on the NHS and millions of patients worldwide.

Make no mistake, the measures which the UK is now trying to force through would damage India’s generic medicines industry and make essential drugs harder to access in the UK and globally.

When public trust in the Government to defend the NHS is at an all-time low, employing an independent negotiator free from ties to corporate interests is the minimum.”

 

K.M. Gopakumar, Senior Researcher Third World Network Trust India said:

“This is a colonial approach to trade: take our rules, no matter the harm it causes your own country. If the UK succeeds in imposing its intellectual property demands then India’s generic drug manufacturing capability will be hamstrung. 

This is an industry that has for decades helped ensure access to life-saving medicines for millions in India and the Global South.

We cannot allow the pharmaceutical industry’s fingerprints to be all over this agreement; the UK must have an honest broker, a negotiator free of industry ties.”

The demand for resignation follows a steady growth in opposition to any inclusion of strict intellectual property provisions in the Free Trade Agreement; in December 35 British and Indian health organisations, including the BMA, issued a warning that NHS drug prices were under threat in the FTA.

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