Boris Johnson has bragged to MPs that the UK's vaccine success was down to 'greed' and 'capitalism', according to a report.
The Prime Minister is said to have made the outrageous remarks during a Zoom chat with Tory MPs earlier this evening.
He was celebrating the pharmaceutical industry for producing the jab at an unprecedented speed.
It comes after Mr Johnson begged EU leaders to backtrack on their threat to ban jab exports to the UK amid the bloc's sluggish vaccination programme.
This evening, he reportedly told members of the Conservative 1922 Committee: "The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends."
However Mr Johnson quickly performed a U-turn, telling the Tory backbenchers he 'regretted' the statement and repeatedly asking them to forget about it.
Sources told The Sun that the Prime Minister noted that AstraZeneca was producing the jab at a cost and he was grateful to the firm for its tireless hard work.
He also said pharmaceutical giants were behind the vaccine success, hailing how they 'wanted to give good returns to shareholders'.
Downing Street refused to comment on the claims.
It comes as Mr Johnson's row with the EU over access to vaccines escalated.
An EU official today said the European Commission will extend the powers to potentially block vaccine exports
to Britain.
The bloc's president Ursula von der Leyen is demanding 'reciprocity' from the UK after claiming the EU sent 10 million jabs to Britain in the past six weeks.
Meanwhile she claimed no jabs were exported from the UK to the EU.
Britain is now said to be considering sharing its vaccine supplies with the Netherlands to ease tensions with the EU, the Guardian reports.
Mr Johnson today said: "There's no point in one country being immunized on its own. We need the whole planet to be inoculated."
The UK has ordered more than 150 million vaccine doses in total - 100 million from AstraZeneca, 40 million from Pfizer and 17 million from Moderna.
