World Health Organization: Pandemics

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her tribute to the Hygiene and Behaviour Change Coalition. I cannot offer guarantees from the Dispatch Box on its future funding, but I will inquire about the matter. As the noble Baroness suggests, it sounds like a fascinating and important project.

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, after last month’s embarrassing Potemkin investigation of Wuhan, will my noble friend the Minister ask the WHO to insist that the Chinese Government release the genome sequences of eight bat viruses of the so-called 7896 clade held in the Wuhan Institute of Virology database that are known to be very closely related to SARS-CoV-2 and may hold critical clues, but which they refuse to release?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we are extremely hopeful for the IPPPR process, and we have supported the team in its desire to get to the bottom of its investigations. I do not know the specifics of the bat viruses to which my noble friend refers, but I reassure him that the British Government are leaning on the WHO as hard as we possibly can to make the most of this important investigation.