A UK-India trade deal is vital, but it must not undermine crucial safeguards

When it comes to fostering closer ties with international partners, this government’s track record speaks for itself. Despite bold promises that Brexit would lead to flourishing trade with the rest of the world, we have seen barely a trickle of new agreements – some of which even former cabinet ministers say are not actually a very good deal.

A recently leaked draft chapter from the UK-India trade negotiations shows that the British government has been pressuring India to adopt rules that could undermine India’s generic medicines industry. Not only would this be bad for India and the many low- and middle-income countries that rely on its successful generic medicines industry. It could also drive up medicine prices for the NHS.

India, often referred to as ‘the pharmacy of the world’, is the world’s biggest producer of generic medicines. Off-patent versions of branded drugs allow countries the world over to access cheaper, high-quality medications to help keep people alive and stretch limited resources further. Globally, Indian generics played a key role in bringing down the price of HIV medication by 99%, saving millions of lives. And over the last three years, the NHS has saved £1.2bn on medicines by deploying more generics, with about a quarter of all drugs we use in our health service sourced from India.

India’s intellectual property (IP) code follows World Trade Organisation rules but makes deliberate and common-sense efforts to balance corporate interests with public health. In order to obtain a patent on a medication, corporations must satisfy certain conditions and prove that their application is indeed for an innovative product. But the UK’s demands could see the end of vital safeguards that currently allow the country to block dubious patents, prevent unreasonable attempts to prolong a drug’s patented status, and give civil society and lawmakers a chance to object to problematic patent applications.

To see the benefits of these laws in action, take the case of Glivec, a vital drug for people battling leukaemia. The NHS used to pay an eye-watering £27,200 per patient per year, but was eventually able to switch over to a generic version once the patent on the drug ran out. Now, we pay just £556.32 per year for the Indian-produced generic equivalent: almost a 98% price reduction.

Importantly, the Indian industry had already been able to quickly develop this generic version thanks to its domestic IP laws, which allow patents to be blocked when a medicine is only a modified version of an existing drug. This sensible provision would be at risk of removal, under the UK’s demands as detailed in the leaked text.

Over the last two years, I have campaigned on the UK government’s disastrous handling of the Covid pandemic. The Tories failed to provide adequate personal protective equipment for our key workers at the earlier stages of the pandemic, failed to adequately protect our elderly, failed to address the disproportionate effect Covid had on people of colour, lower-paid workers and migrant workers.

Further, they hoarded vaccines amidst global shortages and blocked policy proposals led by India to ensure diversified supply of vaccines, tests and treatments, such as the proposal for temporary suspension of patents on these life-saving products at the World Trade Organisation. Now, they are potentially set to cause further chaos by trying to impose a new patent regime on India. Encouragingly, Indian negotiators have suggested they will block attempts to undermine the country’s generics industry, and the Indian government has said it didn’t recognise the leaked text.

Nevertheless, the UK government’s willingness to take risks with the NHS and global health systems more broadly is deeply concerning, and there is still no clarity on what the current position on IP and access to medicines is when it comes to the UK-India agreement.

Trade deals like this are usually negotiated behind closed doors but this government has consistently shown disregard for any form of scrutiny whatsoever. When an agreement was made with Australia, the government avoided even the most cursory attempt at accountability and it consistently fails to guarantee parliamentarians the chance to feed into or even scrutinise the negotiation process.

UK Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has insisted that she would not agree to provisions that would increase the cost of medicines for our NHS, but last week I asked her if her department had carried out impact assessments of these demands, including potential impacts on the NHS. The answer I received from Greg Hands shows the government either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the NHS’s reliance on Indian generics. In either case, they’ve done no impact assessments. What’s also increasingly clear is that no consideration has been given to the potential impact of such plans on international development. For instance, two-thirds of all medicines used across projects in 60 countries run by MSF are generic drugs made in India, and for HIV in particular that number is a staggering 97%. Millions of lives across the world could be affected.

With the India-UK trade negotiations ongoing, elected parliamentarians are still in the dark, and it was only an unusual leak that exposed the potentially damaging measures the UK is exploring. Longer term, we must forge a more transparent way of building the UK’s relationship with countries across the world.

In recent years, our international reputation has been tarnished by the government’s disastrous mismanagement of the economy under successive Prime Minister’s and Chancellor’s. I have been clear that it is vital that progress is made on a trade deal with India to help boost economic growth and help Great British products reach new markets, but the government must have a robust negotiating strategy that does not undermine safeguards on the environment, worker and gender rights and also on health.