World Immunisation Week

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Rory Stewart)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered World Immunisation Week.

It is an enormous privilege and pleasure to stand here for the first time as Secretary of State, but it is a deeper pleasure to be in the Chamber talking about immunisation. Immunisation is an extraordinary story that illustrates why international development really matters, how complicated it can be, in public policy terms, to pull off, and how important it is to be able to communicate to the public and others how, in the end, preventing the terrible loss of a child from polio can be connected right the way back to scientific research, businesses, international co-operation, and very brave doctors and health workers on the ground.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May I be the first person in the Chamber to warmly welcome the Secretary of State to his new post? It is a delight sometimes to see a square peg in a square hole—if that does not sound rude, somehow or other. I warmly congratulate him on his new job.

Is not one of the most disturbing developments of recent years the fact that there are politicians around the world, in some of the most advanced societies, who preach an anti-immunisation message, which will lead to the unnecessary death of children?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. It is grossly irresponsible and, I am afraid, profoundly and disturbingly misleading, and even ignorant, to go around doing that. It ends up stoking public paranoia and fear, and leads to the unnecessary loss of life. From the beginning, the story of immunisation—and, indeed, the story of international development—has often been about challenging public perceptions and irrational fears, and following through. There are reasons for that. The heart of what immunisation is carries within it the seeds of that challenge. The basic idea of immunisation is, of course, to make somebody sick to make them better. From the very beginning, that has involved not only challenging public fears, but something that Governments find quite difficult: taking risks and working, genuinely and collaboratively, internationally.

Although we tend to pat ourselves on the back a great deal in this country, immunisation was, of course, not a European discovery at all. It was a Chinese discovery of the early 16th century. Chinese public health officials, or their 16th century equivalents, went into villages and sneezed into people’s mouths, which rapidly reduced the mortality rate by tenfold or twentyfold. The normal mortality rate for smallpox was 20% to 30%, but remember that that reduced mortality rate under the new technique was still between 0.5% and 2%, so the procedure was very risky. Moving on with my international point, this immunisation practice arrived in Britain in about 1700.