Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

This is an important matter. I will join my hon. Friend in praising the work of the Hepatitis C Trust. Those targets are ambitious, but we are determined to smash them years earlier. She will know that we have been doing a tremendous amount of work globally to combat hep C. As she will not have the opportunity to raise this with the Secretary of State before the recess, I shall also make sure that he has heard her interest in this area.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

Since mid-2022, we have been suffering from excess deaths in the UK. So far this year, we have been seeing around 8% excess mortality. On a weekly basis, that means that around 950 more of our constituents are passing away each week than the five-year average. I have been requesting a debate on this matter regularly for the past six months to no avail. I can understand why the Government do not wish to debate this topic, but the silence from the Opposition parties is perplexing. May I ask the Leader of the House when the public will get an opportunity to witness a debate in this House on this issue of life and death that is affecting them, their friends and their families?

Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

It sounds a wonderful place, and I congratulate my hon. Friend and all in his community for having created such an important asset for the local community. The relevant Department will not be having a Question Time before the autumn, so I will ensure that the Secretary of State knows about this wonderful place. My hon. Friend might like to invite the Secretary of State to come and have a look, and I am sure that if he were to apply for a debate, it would be well attended.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

Once again the BBC finds itself mired in scandal, sleaze and cover-up, so can we have a debate on the BBC where we can debate whether its culture has really changed, as we were promised some years ago? We could also debate whether the public should still be forced to buy a television licence to view live television, even if they do not wish to watch the BBC’s output, and whether the BBC is fit to be the nation’s self-appointed arbiter of truth and transparency through its Verify unit.

Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I encourage my hon. Friend to raise this matter directly with the Secretary of State on Tuesday, but he will know that the Secretary of State has been collecting data from integrated care boards to understand which areas are performing well and which are behind the curve. That will be hugely helpful in ensuring that we have the right focus at a local level and that all our constituents are enjoying outstanding care.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

Evidence has emerged from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that the Pfizer covid vaccine rolled out across the world was not the same, nor was it manufactured in the same way as the vaccine trialled on 44,000 volunteers and subsequently given emergency use approval. If Ministers were unaware of that, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has potentially committed a criminal act. No one could have given informed consent because the public were misled. This also explains the huge difference between the Pfizer data and our own yellow card data with regard to adverse events. Can we have a statement from the Government at their earliest convenience?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, which is appropriate for business questions because I am here to advise Members on what they can do to progress the issues that are of concern to them. The hon. Gentleman could raise this with the relevant Department on Tuesday. Of course, if he thinks there has been any wrongdoing, he has many courses of action available to him. He can raise awareness. He can apply for debates. He was sat next to the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), although he is no longer in his place—he could have a word with him. He can table an early-day motion. He can raise it in questions on the Floor of the House. He could write to the Cabinet Secretary, and I would expect him to do so on such an important matter. He could get in touch with the covid inquiry. He could raise this in the media. He could ask a Select Committee to look at it. He will know that other serious matters have been referred to the police. But he knows all of that—he has been in this place for 13 years —and we look forward to seeing which of those actions the hon. Member will take.

Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I know that all Members of this House take great interest in ensuring that our wonderful football clubs survive and thrive. As someone who was a shareholder in Portsmouth football club and saw it through the largest and fastest ever community buy-out, I know how difficult that can be. I take my hat off to all the volunteers who have kept Bury FC going and kept it playing, and I wish it all the luck at the weekend.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

Our language constantly evolves, with new words coming into common usage. Unfortunately, myocarditis is just such a word; very few of us would even have heard of it barely two years ago. When will the Government look into the reasons behind the explosion in cases of myocarditis, especially among the young, particularly given that this week evidence has emerged that it is affecting some new-born babies? May we have a statement and an urgent debate on this issue?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I encourage the hon. Gentleman to raise this issue with the Department of Health and Social Care. He will know that the next questions to the Secretary of State and his team are on 11 July. They will have in the Department people looking at particular therapy areas and they will also have good oversight of what research is taking place, whether in academia, research institutions or the third sector.

Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am sure I speak for all Members when I say that we completely agree with my hon. Friend’s praise for these very important community assets. They are not just where we can get a decent pint; they also provide a social network for people, and some have community services run out of them, such as post offices. They are at the heart of our communities and we should treasure them. I agree that a debate would be very well attended. I encourage him to apply for one, and I will also ensure that the relevant Department has heard his concern that we should continue doing all we can to support these important community assets.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

In 2014, this House voted to end the Liverpool care pathway. However, in April 2020 it appears that it was reintroduced under the guise of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guideline NG163 as a treatment for agitation and breathlessness. Can we have a debate on NG163 and why this national health guidance ordered the use of huge volumes of benzodiazepines and opiates, which are respiratory suppressants, for people who are already breathless?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I shall certainly make sure that the hon. Gentleman’s remarks have been heard by the Health Secretary. The Liverpool care pathway was ended, and there was a great deal of focus on what really good-quality end of life care should look like. Of course, part of that was the Government’s support for and elevation of the profile of the role of hospices, which I know all Members greatly value. I shall make sure that the Health Secretary has heard his concerns.

Privilege: Conduct of Right Hon. Boris Johnson

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

All that glitters is not gold. The Overton window is framed by a vignette of deceit, and right hon. and hon. Members seem intent on paying homage to it above all else. Some will say and some have said that Boris Johnson misled the Committee and misled Parliament, and others that the Committee set out to achieve its predetermined goal of finding him guilty on all charges. Many of the public hold both views at once, and they are not mutually exclusive, so this pantomime staggers on.

The reality is that Parliament and the public are about as far out of lockstep with each other as they have ever been. I am not sure that the public in the real world care too much about this any more. I think very few people out there in the real world trust Boris Johnson. Sadly, through the process we have seen and the collateral damage to the reputation of this House, I think the Privileges Committee itself has been damaged and may be damaged further by revelations.

The public concern is very much to say, “a plague on all your houses”. What has caused this loss of public confidence in the procedures of the House? Well, the evidence is damning: Boris Johnson and his Government used behavioural scientists and spin doctors to clinically instil unreasonable fear to scare the public into ceasing their normal lives under the guise of a biological threat so deadly that they dared not go outside to see another person.

We all remember the relentless, day in, day out, informing of the public by Ministers in No. 10 about death rates and horror stories. We remember the signs everywhere we looked, we remember the adverts on the television and we remember the supermarket car parks filled with masked citizens each forced to stand in their own car parking bay. The relentless messaging from No. 10 was, “Stand on the stickers, follow the signposts, wash your hands, don’t see your loved ones”. The Government decided it was their job to be that of a parent and they saw the country as a toddlers playgroup, turning our police into teaching assistants, au pairs and, dare I say it, nannies. On every single account, they robbed the public of their dignity. It was nothing short of unacceptable. Our ancestors would be rightly ashamed of the situation.

During that period, the public yet again showed that their natural inclination, as fellow Brits, was to good-natured compliance and community spirit. We saw some of the largest demonstrations of kindness I have ever seen and those demonstrations, under immense pressure, showed the real spirit of the British people. Their altruism held up a mirror to the true nature of the appalling behaviour at No. 10. Any contention the public had that, in No. 10, “They have the latest, most accurate scientific data in front of them, and therefore these measures were justified in the face of the extreme risk” now has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the truth. The fact is that the same people who took the unprecedented powers to suspend our freedoms knew that these measures were nothing short of political posturing. They knew they were pointless. If the risks were really what they said they were and the science of the effectiveness of the lockdowns was that demonstrable, surely they would have been the most strident adherers to the rules—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Mr Bridgen, you heard what I said to Mr Seely. We are talking about the contents of the report and you are going way wider than that now.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Well, I think the behaviour of No. 10 was—

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Bridgen]

I will give way.

[Adam Holloway]

Look, while it is very exciting to see what is going on and to remove a Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority, can we not just think about what happened here or did not happen here? What did the police and Sue Gray actually come up with? The guy was delivered a piece of cake. I would have been the first person, if Boris had had parties in the flat or whatever else, to stand up here and whinge about it, but the reality is that what we know is that he accepted a piece of cake. So can people not accept that, just possibly, the guy stood there and really did not believe he was misleading the House?

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and I think his misplaced loyalty to Boris Johnson is laudable. However, the behaviour in Downing Street bore a closer resemblance to the set of “Love Island” than to a collection of our country’s top minds and high performers working tirelessly to steer us through dangerous waters. This was at the same time as they went further than any other British Government have gone before them to take more and more powers under the wing of the state.

The question is: are internal parliamentary Committees and state inquiries agenda-driven? Well, who can fault the public for thinking that they probably are, because when we look at the covid inquiry that has now started, it is requiring all participants to take lateral flow tests in 2023. Yes, the bubble surrounding the Westminster political elite has become absolutely opaque. The public cannot understand it and it cannot understand the public. I am afraid that the bubble has well and truly burst. The consensus still about the lockdowns is that they were sensible, practical and acceptable for the public. The only discussion ever allowed in this place was how long the lockdowns should be. But lockdowns and restrictions were not for anybody at No. 10; they were only for the little people.

If the data had really indicated that the virus was

“the most vicious threat this country has faced in my lifetime”—

they are the words of the former Prime Minister himself—then why were those who were seeing the data at first hand and were privy to all the later briefings continually breaching their own rules? While they locked us in our houses, they went to parties. When they forced us to wear masks, they broke out the party hats. They closed our schools and they opened the bottles. Well, I’m glad they had such a good time.

[Adam Holloway]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bridgen]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.

The rest of our experiences and the collective memories of lockdown were not that great, to be honest. It was isolation, destroyed livelihoods, missed goodbyes to loved ones, and a new relationship with our state that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to history lessons and modern China—something that none of us ever dreamed would be true in present-day Britain.

We are all human, with all our human failings. Our health is incredibly important to us all, and we all welcome modern advances in medicine that over the centuries have reduced the nastier realities of life. But we never wanted this. What has happened at the top of our Government? The makers of the covid regulations deemed that their work meetings were more important than our children’s education. It is almost as if they wanted to make incompetence endemic. We can never give the children back the years of schooling that they lost, and we can never give the public back the time that we robbed from them. But we can give them answers and legislative assurances that we will never, ever replay that fiasco. Finally, let us sign the whole thing off as a job badly done, a chapter to consign to history and a stark lesson in how not to govern. The people of North West Leicestershire feel betrayed and they have been betrayed. It must never, ever happen again.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

My right hon. Friend speaks for many Members and many people around the country who care deeply about animal welfare. She will know that we are committed to bringing forward these measures. She knows that I will say that we will announce business in the usual way, but I hope that for some provisions in the Bill, for example those on primates, we will be able to do this more swiftly than would happen through the passage of the Bill.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

This week is Carers Week, when we acknowledge and recognise the tremendous work done by unpaid carers, week in, week out. Unfortunately, I have been contacted by a number of constituents who are now unpaid carers, having previously been paid carers until the vaccine mandate. Given that we now know that the mandated medical treatment does not prevent the transmission or contraction of the virus, may we have an apology and a statement from the Government, not only to my constituents, but to the 40,000 other professional carers who have been forced from their jobs on what is obviously a false premise?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I will make sure that the Secretary of State has heard the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. The care workforce is under tremendous pressure, with an enormous number of vacancies at the moment. He will know that the Secretary of State is looking not just at what we can do to bolster that workforce, but at the status of that job and the support people have in it.

Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important matter. I refer him to the remarks made by the Minister who summed up the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien), who happens to be sitting on the Front Bench—business questions are very efficient today. The hon. Gentleman will know that funding has gone up since that scheme went digital. The Government are doing many other things to support people, including the early years strategy pioneered by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom).

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

This week, we saw the BBC unveil its new “Verify” unit. If only we had had such a unit in 2021 to scrutinise the disinformation we were told about the covid-19 vaccines. [Interruption.] The House might recall that we were told that the experimental treatments “will stay in your arm, not pass around your body”—completely incorrect. We were told, “These vaccines will stop you contracting and transmitting the virus”—completely wrong. Safe and effective is not ageing well. All that disinformation was spread by the BBC itself, which is now holding itself as the arbiter of truth. [Interruption.] The question is, who checks the checkers, especially when they have such a chequered history on this subject? Can we have a statement on the discussions the Government have had with the BBC on the setting up of this new unit?

[Penny Mordaunt]

We have all just had a very important moment. We should pause for a moment, because I think we may have just heard the first cuckoo of spring. The hon. Gentleman will forgive Members chuntering from a sedentary position when he asked his question.

The only way that Members of this House and the public can be assured of the facts and arrive at decisions themselves is by having freedom of speech to be able to say things, but also the freedom to learn things and to be uncertain about things. Part of that is ensuring that people can take information from a wide variety of sources. We have reliable and honest journalism of high standards, for which the BBC qualifies, as does the House of Commons Library. I say to all people listening to this debate that we value these things greatly. They are part of our democracy and they should provide certainty for Members in this place and the public. The hon. Gentleman might like to make use of some of those services.

Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The right hon. Lady raises an important matter. Local radio is not just a vital link that keeps people in touch with what is happening in their community; it is vital for democracy and scrutiny in holding people to account, too. I will make sure the director-general has heard what she said, and I would be grateful if she kept us updated on her progress.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

In October 2020, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency awarded a contract worth £1.5 million to Genpact to use artificial intelligence to analyse yellow card adverse event reports associated with covid-19 injections. There is no evidence of any tendering process, and it appears that Genpact was the only supplier considered. Even cursory due diligence shows a huge conflict of interest, with Genpact having massive long-term contracts with AstraZeneca and Pfizer. Can we therefore have an urgent debate on the failings of the MHRA both in its regulation of the experimental covid-19 injections, as detailed in the fantastic Perseus report, and in awarding yellow card oversight to a deeply conflicted company in Genpact?

[Penny Mordaunt]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, this is probably a question to ask the Department of Health and Social Care, and as a point of information for him the next questions to the Department are on 6 June. He can directly ask Ministers about this and any other matter. He can also apply for a Backbench Business debate, a Westminster Hall debate or an Adjournment debate. He knows that he will be called to speak: anyone can look at Hansard and see that he is regularly called to speak in debates and at questions, as he has been today, by whoever is in the Chair. He can table questions and early-day motions and he is, of course, free to tour media studios, to speak to the press and to put out his views on social media. How he chooses to use these opportunities is up to him.

Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his update and advert for future debate applications. We all appreciate the work he and his Committee do.

I join him in congratulating Gateshead. I had better wish both teams well, but particularly Gateshead, as the hon. Gentleman has raised the match this morning.

On his substantive question, I will ensure that both the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Secretary of State for Education have heard his concerns today. He will know that we have widened access to free school meals, but obviously in these very difficult times we want to make sure that all children have good nutrition and are able to have a good day at school.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)]

In light of yesterday’s coroner’s court ruling that the death of Dr Stephen Wright was due to

“unintended complications of the vaccine”,

we now have a legal precedent to review all cases of deaths that fell within the first 14 days of receiving these experimental treatments.

Stephen sadly died 10 days after receiving his first dose of AstraZeneca. As previously any death within a fortnight of receiving the vaccine was regarded as an unvaccinated death, his death was originally attributed to natural causes. Will the Government issue a statement and release details of other such cases where people sadly died within 14 days of vaccination?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I will ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to update the House in light of this recent change. These are very serious matters that I know are shared concerns for many Members on all sides of the House.

MPs from across the House have spoken on many occasions about medical licensing and medical device licences, the processes and policies of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, our covid response and compensation for the vaccine injured, which was recently raised on the Floor of the House by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), the former Attorney General. These are totally legitimate and correct debates to have. Parliamentary scrutiny and debate is one of the many checks and balances that we have in this country to ensure that we are taking the right course of action on these and all other matters. That is what many colleagues do.

What other colleagues are not doing is promoting false propaganda, which is widely known to originate from the Kremlin, abusing and undermining colleagues and the occupant of the Chair, and using the autopsy of a 14-year-old girl as clickbait on their social media feed, all of which the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) has done in the past week. He might like to reflect on that.