BBC forces disclosure of swine flu vaccine costs
The Department of Health has been forced to reveal today that it spent £239 million on swine flu vaccine.
This information has been made public as a result of a freedom of information request by the BBC and an appeal to the information commissioner.
The Department of Health refused to give the information to the BBC when my colleague Julia Ross asked for this data in February last year. The department rejected the FOI application on the grounds that it would breach commercial confidentiality.
We then appealed to the information commissioner, who ruled last month that the total sum paid on obtaining doses of swine flu vaccine should be disclosed.
The commissioner however ruled against the publication of a more detailed breakdown of this spending which we had also asked for.
The department has today complied with this decision and issued an overall figure. It has revealed that it had paid two drug companies £239 million for vaccine doses until the end of deliveries in April 2010. These supplies were for the anticipated swine flu pandemic which failed to materialise.
Most of the money was paid to GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for its Pandemrix vaccine, and the remainder to Baxter Healthcare for Celvapan.
The department was left with many unused doses, although some have been used this flu season after stocks of the latest seasonal flu jab proved insufficient.
This case illustrates the limits of commercial confidentiality under FOI. It shows how claims sometimes made by public authorities about possible damage to commercial interests are not necessarily strong enough grounds for refusing freedom of information requests.
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Commercial confidentiality seems to be a rather flimsy excuse for not disclosing the spending. Perhaps the Department of Health is more concerned about appearing foolish in succumbing to the Flu Crazy hype surrounding the H1N1 swine flu "pandemic."
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~ 1/4 of a billion quid, blimey, but according to wikipedia ~ 11 million doses, I guess 20 quid is a fair price for life it'd had turned out to be as bad as 1918.
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Any fool can see that this was a "damned if you do, damned it you don't" situation i.e. if they had not spent the money and there had been a pandemic, they would have been crucified. If I had my way I would set up a body that would require journalist to fill out "what I would do in these circumstances" forms which would then be made public when the dust had settled. That is the only way in which we could level the playing field between journalists, with their infamous "power without responsibility" and the guys who actually have to take decisions.
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Or better yet, require every member of a goverment or self-regulatory body who has policy responsibilities (such as DOH, WHO, or CDC) to disclose all previous and current financial & employment ties to pharmaceutical companies. This way we would know if the guys who actually have to make the decisions are free from conflicts of interest.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I couldn't agree more with Mike Waller. Do journalists not realise that "government" is not easy. In many cases it is the adoption of the least bad of several very bad options. When the next problem arises overseas surely the prime Minister should hand over the reins to someone like John Simpson who seems to know all the answers.
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Although it seems to be a lot of money the Department would have been crucified if it had ordered insufficient doses on cost grounds so - in the absence of any information to the contrary we have to assume that there was no profiteering involved, and that it was a competently managed transaction - if so, then why the virginal coyness to answer the question ?
I am rather uneasy at the secretive ethos within this and other Government Departments -secrecy gives the impression that there must be something shameful going on ( does the "Iraq enquiry come to mind ? )- if there isn't then why the coyness ?
We are now supposed to have "transparency" aren't we , so although commercial sensitivity must be respected , so should "Open Government" be respected without the need for recourse to lawyers all the time.
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The BBC should be ashamed of itself. The government would have been hung out to dry if the swine flu pandemic had been much more serious and they hadn't bought the jabs. Didn't turn out to be so serious so the BBC turns on the gov. The BBC wastes plenty of money too and its perhaps time to clip their wings a bit - how much are they paying "stars" etc with OUR money..? These alleged stars certainly dont have as much value as medicine...
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Erm, for the ill informed posters, the National health service of Angleterre went cap-in-hand to the devolved Scottish health service and begged for vaccines to make up the shortfall in the English semi-privatised health service supplies vital vaccines.
Only in England were the rich paying customers prioritised over "AT RISK" patients. Only in England are we witnessing a further slip of the health service away from "NATIONAL" back towards the selective health service for the more wealthy Gentlemen and ladies!
Thank you Scotland for bailing us out!
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