Boris Johnson has said 'greed' and 'capitalism' are behind the UK's Covid vaccine success

Boris Johnson has told Tory MPs that “capitalism” and “greed” are behind the UK’s vaccine drive success.

The Prime Minister made the comments at a private meeting of Tory MPs, but then hastily sought to backtrack, repeatedly asking those at the 1922 Committee to forget he used the terms as he praised AstraZeneca for supplying the Oxford vaccine at cost.

He told MPs at the 1922 Committee: "The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends." He later added, "Actually I regret saying it,” and asked MPs repeatedly to, "forget I said that".

The comments risk inflaming a row with the European Commission over access to vaccines, with the organisation’s president Ursula von der Leyen threatening a ban on exports of jabs to the UK because it is angry that AstraZeneca has not supplied the doses expected for the bloc.

But sources insist the PM was not discussing the row, but instead talking about the wider scientific endeavour.

Witnesses say the comments came as he hailed pharma giants for producing the jabs, and that the PM made a joke about how details of the 1922 Committee virtual meetings often leak.

‘An incredibly revealing remark’

Vaccine campaigners have accused Johnson of a “warped” understanding of the crisis, with the Global Justice Now campaign, which is campaigning for wider international access to jabs, hitting out at the Prime Minister.

The organisation’s director Nick Dearden said: “The Prime Minister will call this comment a slip of the tongue, but it’s an incredibly revealing remark. It shows just how warped his understanding of this crisis is.

“We have a vaccine because of massive public investment and the remarkable work of scientists at publicly-funded universities. We’ve rolled it out because of our incredible National Health Service.

“Greed, however, drove big pharma to privatise this work and withhold doses from millions worldwide to protect their profits. And, if Boris Johnson keeps letting it happen, there’ll be more coronavirus mutations that could send us back to square one.”

Former shadow cabinet minister Richard Burgon said Mr Johnson was “wrong” as “billions in public funds went into developing the vaccines”.

“Now the vaccine patents must be waived to ramp up production and save lives all across the world,” the Labour MP said.

‘We were fighting a novel disease’

The gaffe came shortly after a Downing Street press conference held on the one year anniversary of the nation’s first coronavirus lockdown, and following a day of mourning on Tuesday (23 March) for those who had lost their lives during the pandemic.

At the briefing, Johnson said: “In retrospect there are probably many things that we wish that we’d known and many things that we wish we’d done differently at the time.”