Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am sorry to hear about the situation in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. He will know that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has a number of programmes to ensure that vital services, such as those he outlined, are co-ordinated locally and can still be accessed. He is right that for the charity sector in particular, but also for businesses and individuals, these are necessary services that people should have access to. He will know that just because bricks and mortar may be going, those services can be continued in other ways, as happens in many other places across the UK. I will ensure that someone from the Department gets in touch with his office, shares the good practice that is going on and gives some advice on how he can ensure that those services are available to his constituents.

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

In Tuesday’s 90-minute Westminster Hall debate on trends in excess deaths, Back-Bench contributions were limited to three minutes each. Given the huge and growing public interest in, and concern about, excess deaths, and given the growing awareness across this House, may we now have a debate in Government time on excess deaths? Also, will the Government instruct the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to release anonymised the doses, dates and deaths data that it holds, which it has already disclosed to AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna—public data that the public have no right to, and data that would very quickly verify whether those experimental covid-19 vaccines are, in fact, safe and effective?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. The fact that he has held a debate in this place and that it was well attended shows that there is great scrutiny of and interest in these matters. He will know that he has other options for applying for a debate. He is sitting next to the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), and I am sure that some of the things he said in his question would be considered favourably—meaning that his application would be considered favourably. I would encourage him to apply for a debate. He knows that he can secure a debate on that subject, because he has just recently done so.

I will also just emphasise that there is no evidence linking excess deaths to the covid-19 vaccine. Analysis from the Office for National Statistics, published in August last year, shows that people who have had a covid-19 vaccine have a lower mortality rate than those who have not been vaccinated. The issue of excess deaths is important to scrutinise, and clearly the covid inquiry is looking at those issues too, but we need to be careful in our messaging to ensure that—it is individuals’ choice—people have the facts about vaccines of all kinds.