By Kieonte Clarke, News Reporter
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A diplomatic row has broken out between the European Union and the UK after European Council President
Charles Michel claimed the UK had imposed an outright ban on the export of vaccines in his weekly briefing note.
Both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab have responded to these accusations. In today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Johnson said that the UK had “not blocked” the sale abroad of “a single vaccine or its components”.
Meanwhile, Mr Raab has written to Mr Michel “To Set the record straight”, saying the “false claim has been repeated at various levels within the EU and the Commission”. His letter is understood to say: “The UK government has not blocked the export of a single Covid-19 vaccine or vaccine components.”
Some say that the reason why Mr Michel is saying this is because of the slow rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines in the EU. Meanwhile, in the UK a third of the population have received their first dose.