Covid-19: Response and Excess Deaths

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

As we have just witnessed, feelings are very strong on this issue, and large numbers of people have suffered directly or indirectly as a result of having covid-19 vaccines. For most people—the vast majority—the covid-19 vaccines were very good news, and they made an enormous contribution to the public health of the country, but that does not mean that we should turn a blind eye to those for whom the vaccines were bad news. In the earlier debate today, I reiterated my request that the Government take effective action, through the vaccine damage payment scheme, to ensure that those people for whom the vaccines were bad news receive proper compensation.

As the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) reminded us, the maximum payment under that scheme is £120,000. That figure has not been updated in line with inflation since 2007; had it been updated, it would now be about £200,000. Why do the Government not update it? Relatively small numbers of people are involved, but it seems as though there is reluctance on the Government’s part to face up to the reality that, for a small proportion of people, the vaccines were bad news.

When we had this debate initially, soon after the roll- out of the vaccines, the Government were unequivocal in saying that the vaccines were safe and effective, and with no qualification at all. Subsequently, AstraZeneca issued essentially a warning notice to practitioners, which said that they should be cautious about the roll-out of some of the vaccines to some patients. People who wish to make claims against the vaccine manufacturers and/or the Government—civil claims to supplement the £120,000 that they have already been awarded—are finding it difficult to get access to lawyers to pursue their claims, particularly if those claims arise from vaccines administered after AstraZeneca issued its first warning against the safety of its vaccines in certain circumstances.

A large number of people across the country look to the Government to intervene, first, to ensure that the vaccine damage payment scheme is updated, and secondly, to ensure that the people who applied under that scheme have their claims dealt with in a reasonable timeframe. Many of those claims are not. There are more than 9,000 claims, and 4,000-plus have not even been resolved yet. The delays extend to 18 months or more. The consequence for many claimants is that they are unable to begin their civil action, but a civil action has to be brought within three years of the cause of action arising if it is not to be affected by the limitation period.

I have asked the Prime Minister—I had a meeting with him, and have raised this at Prime Minister’s questions —whether the Government will intervene to ensure that the three-year limitation period does not apply to people still waiting for a determination of their claim under the vaccine damage payment scheme, if they wish to go on and sue the Government or the manufacturers. It is a matter of simple equity and justice. I have yet to have a substantive answer from the Government. I am due to meet the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care next week, and I hope that by then she will be able to assure me—she is a lawyer, as well as a Secretary of State—that nobody will be denied justice as a result of the Government’s delays in administering the vaccine damage payment scheme.

I very much share the disappointment of the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, who introduced this debate, that module 4 of the public inquiry has been postponed. Last August, there was a preliminary hearing, and there was some potent advocacy by the lawyers representing the victim groups who wanted to give evidence in module 4. That evidence will be extremely compelling when it is heard by the inquiry. It was a big disappointment to those groups, to me and to others that module 4 was postponed. We have been told that it has been postponed until January next year. The reasons for that seem rather weak and feeble, but the inquiry is independent. Evidence that was to have been given in July will now not be heard until January next year. The implications are serious for those seeking compensation for their suffering, but it is also significant for that other group of people.

That is because module 4 deals not just with vaccines but with therapeutics. There is a big issue about therapeutics, because Evusheld, the therapeutic that was meant to be available in particular for those who were immuno- suppressed and not able to take the vaccines, was never approved by NICE. A second version of Evusheld was being brought forward, but that has also still not been approved.

My constituent Bernard Mathysse has written to me in recent months to draw my attention to a letter sent on 26 March to the Prime Minister by a group of charities concerned with the issue. It calls for the Government to intervene and ensure that an early decision is made on what can be done to help immunocompromised people who cannot access the vaccines in any event. My constituent says that

“France has given emergency authorisation to Evusheld 2, and has got it into patients within a month of authorisation”.

He believes that other European countries will do the same. The United States has given Pemgarda—another drug—emergency authorisation, and so on.

Why can we not get a commitment from the Government to ensure that Evusheld is available to clinically vulnerable people? My constituent also wrote to me in July 2023 expressing the need to fast-track an essential pre-exposure prophylaxis drug. The consequence for him is that he and his wife have been in effect shielding for about four years: they meet friends only outside, they do not travel on public transport or go by aeroplane, they ask the family to test before a visit, they mask indoors, and they have to assess every situation to gauge the risks involved. That obviously means that they have a much restricted and isolated life, to their detriment, but that could be resolved if the Evusheld issue was taken seriously by the Government. If module 4 had been heard this summer, perhaps Baroness Hallett, as an interim recommendation, could have said, “The Government must get on with that.”

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I am hugely enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech. I, too, have a constituent who is immunosuppressed and, unbelievably, still shielding, which is putting huge pressure on the family. Does not the slowness of the decision over this therapeutic stand in sorry contrast with the rapid decision taken on vaccines in the first place?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Exactly. One of the inhibitions there may have been on the Government’s part was that, to justify the use of emergency vaccines, it was necessary for them to believe that there was no alternative. Of course, if those alternative measures had been recognised as a suitable way of providing some protection to individuals against covid-19, that would have undermined the vaccine manufacturers’ case that they needed emergency authorisation for their vaccines without going through the normal testing procedures.

The continuing slowness of the Government in responding to requests for licensing of Evusheld reinforce the feeling out there among many people that something funny is going on here and that, if we had come forward with those therapeutic measures at the beginning, many lives would have been saved, such an extensive vaccination programme would not have been needed, and the Government would have saved a lot of money. There is an issue there, but that is why the part of the motion that regrets the postponement of that element of the covid-19 inquiry is important.

We can debate academically or in political circles the issue of the excess deaths, but it is interesting that the Government concede that there have been excess deaths. The House of Commons Library’s briefing produced on 15 April for this debate says:

“The government has acknowledged an increase in the number of excess deaths in England and Wales and has attributed these to a combination of factors, such as the prevalence of heart disease, flu and heart disease.”

The emphasis is on heart disease, but many people feel that the increase in heart conditions and disease has been exacerbated by the very vaccines that people were persuaded to take to protect them against covid-19. According to an article last year, Dr Thomas Levy said that, on his estimate,

“vaccines are causing heart injury in at least 2.8% of people who receive the covid injections.”

He estimated that

“a minimum of 7 million Americans now have hearts damaged by covid ‘vaccines.’ And although there’s no way of being certain at this time, he said, it’s within the realm of possibility that over 100 million people in America have some degree of heart damage from the injections—not myocarditis but heart damage that will be detectable with a troponin test.”

There may be a link between the propensity of vaccines to damage people’s hearts and what the House of Commons Library, interpreting the Government figures, concedes is an issue of excess deaths attributable to heart disease.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point that there is not a single medical intervention that does not also have risks—the medical profession will always acknowledge that—but is it not about a balance of the benefits against the risks? Ultimately, the judgment was made by those who supported the covid vaccine that the benefits far outweighed the risks imposed by the vaccine.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I agree that the benefits outweigh the risks, but I do not think we have ever had a system in this country where we license drugs on the basis that they will do more harm than good to those who take them. If the drugs are potentially significantly harmful to a large number of patients, those drugs do not get their licence—and why should they?

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

With respect, that is exactly what we do. Antibiotics cause anaphylactic reactions that kill people. We give antibiotics to people knowing that a very small portion of them will be killed by them but, overall, they save many more lives than they take. That is why they get a licence.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The key question is: do the people who are being prescribed the antibiotics know that there is a risk that they will die as a result of them being prescribed? If so, they are told that, but nobody who was affected by the covid-19 vaccines was told that they were anything other than absolutely safe and effective. That is the basis upon which a lot of the litigation will be founded.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Hon. Members are suggesting that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks. They suggest in these debates that there is always a balance to be made, and I agree. But do they acknowledge that there is a risk attached to the vaccine, and that the excess deaths that we are describing can be attributed to the vaccine? They might suggest that the risk is outweighed by the enormous benefit of the vaccine by saving lives, but if they are suggesting that there is a risk that could help explain the excess deaths, that is not the Government’s position. Their position is that there is no link between the vaccines and the excess deaths. If they are suggesting that there is a link but it is outweighed by the benefits, that is a different argument.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. You cannot intervene on an intervention. I call Sir Christopher Chope.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Madam Deputy Speaker, the enthusiasm is unbounded. I will happily give way to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) if she wishes to make the point to me in an intervention that she would have liked to have made to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger).

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. This is the point, is it not? There has to be absolute certain evidence that there is that link to the covid vaccine. That still has to be proven, in my belief.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. It is important that the hon. Gentleman answers the first intervention before taking a second.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. That is very wise advice.

I take the hon. Lady’s point, but the Government were reluctant to concede, at the beginning, that there might be risks associated with all this. Now, we have seen that some people have been adversely affected and, in certain circumstances, have even lost loved ones. We would expect the Government to look after people who have been adversely affected, which was the whole ethos of the vaccine damage payment scheme when it was set up. The Government are falling down on their responsibilities on that and, as a result, that is adding to vaccine hesitancy. The proportion of people who are accepting invitations from the health service to have yet another booster is plummeting, because increasingly people realise that in their particular circumstances the risks may outweigh any possible benefit.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. The Chamber asks for a link. We know that the excess deaths are predominantly in cardiac arrests, heart problems and strokes. We know that the vaccine works supposedly by inducing human cells to produce spike protein, to be attacked by our own immune system and create the immune response. We know that the vaccine does not stay in the arm. It travels all over the body through the blood supply. Blood vessels are lined by endothelial cells. The mRNA goes into them and makes them creates a spike. They are attacked by the immune system. That explodes into the blood supply and that is a blood clot. If it goes to the heart, you have a heart attack; if it goes to the brain or the lungs, you have a stroke or a pulmonary embolism. That is the link. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. This is the final warning. It is simply not acceptable for there to be clapping in the Gallery when particular Members speak. If there is any repeat of it, I will ask for the Gallery to be cleared. I just want to be absolutely clear that that is the position I will take, because it is not what happens in the Chamber or the Gallery.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The hon. Gentleman has put on record what he wanted to say in that intervention. All I am saying is that, as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage, I receive a large number of letters, not just from my constituents but from across the country, from people who have been adversely affected. I do not think anybody is challenging the authenticity of their circumstances or the complaints they make.

I am going to close—I know a lot of other people want to participate in the debate—with one such letter that came not from one of my constituents, but somebody else. She gives her name, but I will not repeat it. She says:

“After receiving my covid-19 vaccination, I experienced severe adverse reactions that resulted in hospitalisation. These reactions encompassed stroke-like symptoms, including seizures, tremors, inability to work or talk, irregular heart palpitations, low oxygen levels, vertigo, brain fog, memory loss, balance issues, tingling, high blood pressure and more. Despite undergoing extensive examinations, a recent diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder has highlighted my ongoing struggles with headaches, declining eyesight, and daily seizures.

Before vaccination, I was a healthy 34-year-old; however, now I am severely disabled, unable to work, and filled with uncertainty about my future, especially with the imminent arrival of my baby. Unfortunately my situation is not unique; thousands of individuals are suffering similar consequences. Despite assurances of safety, many have been left with life-altering disabilities or worse. I am writing to urgently request an investigation into cases like mine to address the impact of vaccine-related injuries.”

She goes on to give the batch number, and to quote the rather lame response from the MHRA.

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

The hon. Gentleman has just illustrated very clearly the fundamental difference between some of the points that have been made about prophylaxis and anaphylaxis. When people are given a drug that could precipitate or trigger an anaphylactic reaction, they are given prophylactic cover to prevent that. The hon. Gentleman is talking about the consequences—as described by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen)—of spike protein embedding itself throughout the body, prompting a systemic inflammatory response that is not acute, as with anaphylaxis, but chronic. That reaction to the vaccine is very different from a normal allergic reaction that is anaphylactic and will be treated appropriately.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing his scientific expertise to the debate, because I am no scientist; I am a mere lawyer.

[Dr Mullan]

May I try to add some further clarity? There are actually a range of side effects, many of which occur over time. Ibuprofen, for instance, is another medicine that we might consider safe and call safe, and a large number of people take it, but eventually, after many years, some will suffer a stomach bleed that causes them to pass away as a result of taking too much ibuprofen over time, although that was medically allowed and considered to be safe. I am afraid that the attempt to give a scientific explanation is based on a flawed understanding of medicines and side effects, which has been demonstrated by numerous people on the other side of the debate.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I will not be able to adjudicate on whether my hon. Friend or the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) is right, but I look forward to my hon. Friend’s being able to make his own speech and to its being subjected to scrutiny by the hon. Gentleman. That is a spectacle to which I think we are all looking forward.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying, and I am sure we all feel very sorry for the young woman in the case that he has described, but is there not the potential that when a vaccine is given in such great quantities to such a large cohort of the population, there is more likely to be correlation than causation between the effects? There is no doubt that people were ill before covid and before the vaccination was delivered, but my problem is that I do not know the answer to that question. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) says he does, but I am not sure how he can. What I will say is this: should not all of us be calling for further research on this issue to find out what the fundamental truth of it is, rather than listening to those who make assertions that have not been approved by scientists?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Part of the answer to my hon. Friend’s question is to be found in the adjudications of the independent medical advisers who have been looking at claims made under the vaccine damage payment scheme. They have concluded that in several hundred cases there is no doubt that the adverse consequences that are the subject of complaint were caused by the vaccines, and that has given rise to the compensation. In a large number of other cases, the medics have concluded that the conditions suffered and complained about were caused by the vaccines, but have not caused sufficient disability—beyond the 60% threshold—to trigger payments.

Given the evidence provided by the doctors who are acting independently on behalf of the vaccine damage compensation scheme, there is now no doubt that, for some people, the vaccines are fatal or cause severe damage or injury. That is not in dispute, and the more people understand that, the more they will realise that it was over the top for the Government and Ministers to pretend at the beginning of the vaccination programme that these vaccines were going to be different from almost all other known medical interventions and vaccines—in other words, they were not absolutely safe and effective. The failure to say that has severely undermined trust in the system, which is why we need a lot more debates like this.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Caulfield]

Absolutely, and I thank my hon. Friend for his work during those difficult times. We did not have a vaccine in those days, and we did not know how long covid was going to last. I reassure the relatives who are listening to this debate that we treated every single patient in the best way we could. If they needed a ventilator, we often had to ship them out of hospital to get them to a ventilator, but they got one. If they did not need a ventilator, we treated them. We did not leave people to die, and I reassure relatives who might think that we did that it certainly was not my experience of looking after patients.

It is important to look at the data on covid vaccinations. The Office for National Statistics published data last August showing that people who received a covid-19 vaccination had a lower mortality rate than those who had not been vaccinated. Given that 93.6% of the population has been vaccinated with either one or two doses, or multiple does, it is almost impossible to determine correlation versus causation. Vaccinated people will feature highly in excess death numbers because most people have been vaccinated, which is why we need to go through the data really carefully and not just take the first data at face value.

The covid virus continues to circulate, and we are now living with covid. Some people are still very vulnerable to covid, although the current variant is obviously less severe than the initial variant. We have just had our spring vaccine roll-out, and those who are invited should please go to get their vaccine. We know that it makes a difference to the most vulnerable. Over this winter, after both the flu and covid vaccine roll-outs, we have seen a significant reduction in hospital admissions.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

When will the immunosuppressed have access to Evusheld? Will it be this week, next week, sometime or never?

[Maria Caulfield]

That is a clinical decision, but now that we have the omicron variant, the evidence for Evusheld’s effectiveness is not as compelling.

Returning to the crux of the matter, there are risks and benefits to every single medicine when the regulator or NICE is weighing up whether to license or fund a product. If the advice coming to us is that, with omicron, the benefits of Evusheld do not outweigh the risks, we have to take that advice. People are not currently being advised to shield, but I recognise that people are very nervous, particularly when they cannot have the vaccine. We are in constant touch with NICE and the MHRA on this, but we have to respect their decision if it is felt that a product will not benefit patients.

Sport: Gambling Advertising

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) for securing this important debate. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The relationship between gambling and most sports is complex and, in many ways, symbiotic. However, given the growing knowledge of the impact of gambling harms on people’s lives, many have raised concerns about that connection. They worry that football and other sports might be playing a role in exposing vulnerable fans, sportspeople and, in particular, children and young people to the gambling market. Having met some of those receiving treatment for gambling addiction and families bereaved by gambling-related loss, I have seen the devastating effect that gambling can have on people’s lives.

In 2020, it was estimated that 7% of the population, including adults and children, were negatively affected by someone else’s gambling. That is even more concerning in a modernised world in which most people have the ability to gamble anywhere, at any time, on their phones. I am therefore pleased that the Government are finally under way with the implementation stage of the long-awaited gambling White Paper, which looks to make our gambling regulation fit for the modern digital era. Indeed, it has cross-party support, as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) outlined.

The White Paper was, though, relatively light-touch on the issues that relate to gambling advertising in sport. It identified sports governing bodies as best placed to drive up standards regarding their gambling sponsorship deals. That is not to say that no action has been taken in this area: outside the White Paper, regulators, the industry and sports have made progress to increase protections. Last week, I met the Advertising Standards Authority, which told me about its work to regulate gambling advertising, particularly with a view to protecting children and young people, including the “strong appeal” test.

The gambling industry has signed up to a voluntary code of socially responsible advertising, which bans gambling adverts before 9 o’clock. The most recent version covers most live sport from five minutes before it starts to five minutes after it has ended. That is known as the whistle-to-whistle ban, and it has reduced the number of TV betting commercials viewed by children during live sporting events before the watershed by 97%. The Premier League has also announced that front-of-shirt gambling sponsors will be withdrawn from the start of the season in 2026.

However, those measures have received their fair share of criticism. Viewers are still exposed to a high number of gambling adverts and logos during sporting events, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) highlighted. That happens through a number of visuals, from hoardings and perimeter boards to players’ kits. Indeed, the Premier League’s commitment does not cover sponsorship on the sleeves and backs of shirts, and is not yet enforced.

As already discussed, the revenue from gambling sponsorship is crucial to some sports. However, the prevalence of such adverts poses a particular issue for children and those vulnerable to problem gambling as they are difficult to avoid, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said. As with the online space and direct marketing, it is not possible to opt out of such adverts. That makes it hard for those with personal experience of problem gambling to follow the sports they previously enjoyed, and it is hard for parents to know the best way to protect their children from harm.

In that context, we need the sports sponsorship code of conduct to be published. That code, required by the Government’s White Paper and led by sports governing bodies, would recognise that the relationship between gambling and sports needs to be conducted responsibly in order to prevent gambling harm in both sportspeople and sports fans. I understand that it will be based on the principles of reinvestment, sporting integrity, protecting children and vulnerable people and socially responsible promotion. In practice, it could include things such as a requirement that replica kits be available without gambling logos, a commitment to reinvest sponsorship funds into grassroot activities, the use of sponsorship to promote safer gambling messages and the protection of those in family areas in stadiums from being able to see gambling advertising.

I understand that as part of the development process there will initially be one main code to cover all sporting bodies, and after that each governing body will be able to develop a short sport-specific code, whether it be for racing, cricket, football or others. However, there has been no sign of the main code, let alone the sport-specific commitments. I therefore ask the Minister whether he will call on the governing bodies to publish the codes without further delay, perhaps in time for the first anniversary of the White Paper. That is something that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee recommended in its report published last year, to which the Government have yet to respond. That is a concern, because without the code the White Paper seems to hardly address the relationship between gambling and sport. It is only through a combination of measures, from giving the Gambling Commission powers to crack down on the black market to restricting bonus and free bet offers, that we will bring our regulation into the modern age and better protect people from harm.

There is no question but that gambling advertising on the whole has increased in the past two decades. The impact of gambling harms could be better understood and researched. That is one reason why I would like to see the statutory levy for gambling get under way soon, so that levy funds can be used to conduct the research needed to aid effective prevention and treatment methods going forward. It would therefore be helpful if the Minister provided an update on the levy consultation and when the Government might expect to publish a response.

To conclude, I hear the concerns about the impact of gambling advertising in sport on children and young people, as well as those vulnerable to harm. Given the reliance of many sports on gambling sponsorship for revenue, it is crucial that the governing bodies reflect on that relationship and issue their code of conduct as soon as possible. I hope the Minister will reaffirm his commitment to ensuring that the code is published, and to the implementation of the White Paper more broadly.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the Minister, I note that the hon. Lady began her speech by referring to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, but she did not expand on that at all. People who are following this debate, and others like it, need to be informed about the nature of those interests; would the hon. Lady like to spell out them out?

[Stephanie Peacock]

I have previously taken hospitality from the gambling industry. I would have to check the dates to say specifically which body it was, but I am happy to inform the House at a later date if needed.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady.

Conversion Practices (Prohibition) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Neale Hanvey]

I will—

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman referring to clause 4 and line 10 on page 3 of the Bill, where there a specific reference:

“to suppress a sexual orientation”?

[Neale Hanvey]

Yes. As I was saying, the document points out that the use of the Sentencing Acts definitions is “problematic” because the definition of

“‘sex’…is not settled in law and a Supreme Court Case on the subject is pending. ‘Transgender Identity’ is similarly problematic because the concept of ‘identity’ is wider than the equivalent protected characteristic”

in the Equality Act.

The document moves on to the ineffectiveness of statutory defences, saying:

“While Clause 1(2) of the bill makes serious efforts to deal with concerns around prosecutions each defence raises serious issues in the following terms:

a. The religion defence is not a statutory defence at all because it cannot apply where a conversion practice has taken place. This means it is not an excusatory defence in criminal law.

b. The ‘approval/disapproval’ defence is vague and ‘disapproval’ is not defined

c. The ‘health practitioner’ defence is a complex three-part defence which places the ‘reverse burden’ on a Defendant. The definition of a ‘health practitioner’ at Clause 4 covers most but not all clinical roles, (unregulated therapists, counsellor, helpline operators or online forum moderators would not qualify). To rely on this defence, a health practitioner must also prove to the civil standard (i) they were complying with regulations (this term is not defined) (ii) that the action they took was reasonable and (iii) that there was no ‘predetermined outcome’. Placing reverse burdens on Defendants (particularly clinicians or similar) is generally considered to be undesirable because Defendants are not expected to prove their innocence. Legitimate clinical practice will sometimes have a predetermined outcome where a confident and clear diagnosis is made.”

I can think of examples where that would apply in clinical practice.

The document continues:

“d. The ‘assisting’ defence is unclear and undefined.

e. The ‘exploring or questioning’ defence suffers from the same flaw as the religion defence, it applies only where a conversion practice is not proved and so is not a statutory defence at all.

f. The ‘parental responsibility’ defence applies only where a person having parental responsibility (i) is exercising it and (ii) where they prove on reverse burden that the welfare of the child was their paramount consideration. As children get older parental responsibility in law is ‘exercised’ less and less. Requiring a parent to prove that welfare was not simply a consideration, but a ‘paramount’ consideration is onerous and likely impossible for a Defendant parent to prove.”

The Gay Men’s Network also addresses the human rights issues we heard about from the two KCs earlier:

“We take the view that the bill as drafted is not compliant with the Human Rights Act 1998 and would likely be declared incompatible with the convention for the following reasons:

Right to a Fair Trial (Article 6)

A prosecution alleging a parent supressed an identity by regulating clothing would require a parent to accept that such an identity exist. That is contrary to Article 6 which requires criminal tribunals be independent. It would also compel belief in the criminal sphere in such a concept while disbelief in such a concept is a protected characteristic in the civil sphere. That would create a serious inconsistency in law.”

That is very clear. The document continues:

“The bill leaves key terms undefined which is contrary to the Article 6 right that a Defendant understand the case against them in ordinary and clear language. The reverse burdens in clause 1(2) impose significant and onerous burdens on Defendants and in some cases do not amount to statutory defences at all.

Right to respect for private and family life (Article 8)

The bill makes significant incursions into family life by potentially criminalising parental guidance or regulation that touches on sexual orientation or ‘transgender identity’. Difficult conversations that parents have”—

as we spoke about some time ago—

“as a matter of course would potentially be criminalised. Further, a parent can only rely on the relevant defence as outlined above. This is highly likely to be viewed as significant state overreach by domestic and supra national courts.

Right to freedom of conscience (Article 9) and expression (Article 10)

This bill would significantly curtail both religious and political expression. A similar bill passed in Victoria, Australia, led to the domestic human rights body regulating public prayer. The fact that criminal liability can trigger from a single incident and the wide meaning of the term “supress” casts the net of criminal liability so widely the offence is likely to be declared incompatible with the convention.”

The document concludes:

“While the member for Brighton Kemptown has made significant efforts to deal with such concerns our position is that a bill based on the self-reported phenomenon of ‘identity’ and the wide term ‘supress’ might, despite best efforts, perversely fuel the very problem that it intends to solve.”

As I mentioned earlier, like section 28, the Bill would likely prevent a young person from securing an explorative conversation with even the most supportive and receptive trusted adult, due to its chilling effect. I have also raised the question of who would then provide the approved therapy.

Moving on to therapists, in a recent paper, educational psychologists Dr Claire McGuiggan, Dr Peter D’Lima and Lucy Robertson highlight the assumption that psychologists will be the ones who will guide the response and who have the skills to do so, but observe that psychologists are divided on this issue, too. They note the following:

“In response to the interim findings of the Cass review…the Association of Clinical Psychologists-United Kingdom…published a statement demanding a radical shift in the support for young people with gender concerns. They called for more comprehensive multi-disciplinary assessments and increased consideration of sociocultural factors, such as homophobia. The ACP-UK also strongly conveyed the uncertainty about how best to intervene related to the dearth of robust and high-quality data on the safety and effectiveness of medical transition, and the inability of clinicians to ascertain clearly who will persist or desist in their gender dysphoria…The ACP-UK statement was met with a rebuttal from a group of clinical psychologists in an open letter to the ACP-UK…They disassociated themselves from the ACP-UK response…Within educational psychology professions, however, only two educational psychologists have publicly referenced the concerns reflected in the Cass review.”

Apart from those two voices, the psychologists claim that there is silence, avoidance and suppression.

Silence: there is no response from the Association of Educational Psychologists or the Division of Educational and Child Psychology, and no guidance or caution, despite it being reported that educational psychologists are expertly placed to support trans-identified young people. Avoidance within the profession: it almost appears as if the Cass review did not happen at all, and that there is clear consensus on how best to support trans-identified youth. Their approach is affirmation, and that is the problem. Alongside that, there is suppression. That is being enacted on social media, where clear messages have been put out that if anyone asks a difficult questions, they are to be shut down and reported to the regulator and will face disciplinary action. That is the culture at the back of all of these pieces of legislation. That is the risk: professionals cannot become activists. That is happening in education and in educational psychology.

The paper led the authors to raise the fundamental position—I absolutely agree with it, and it applies to so many disciplines—that surely a healthy profession, a profession which prides itself on child-centred, evidence-based reflective practice, cannot continue to avoid, ignore or suppress the issue any longer. It must openly, explicitly and deeply engage with it. Disagreement must be tolerated and explored. The alternative is avoidance of the issue to protect educational psychologists from discomfort at the expense of the needs of children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Liam Fox]

If the point the hon. Gentleman makes is valid, it is valid in the other direction, too. It should be wrong and, in his case, criminalised to tell any young person that they are definitely something when they are unclear about what they are. If that is what comes out of our debate today, that is a step forward in the wider debate.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Liam Fox]

I will give way briefly because other Members still want to speak.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the noble Lord Winston put it well in the other place when he said,

“The basic problem is this: we are at risk of legislating for a piece of biology that we really do not understand. We do not understand the underlying mechanisms”?

—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 February 2024; Vol. 835, c. 1847.]

[Sir Liam Fox]

I would not want to contradict the noble Lord in any way whatsoever, but there are other elements of the Bill that give me cause for anxiety. I know those are part of the reason the Government have found bringing forward legislation difficult. We have talked on both sides of the House about the concept of the harm that could be done by these processes, but there is no test of harm in the Bill. If all forms of conversion therapy covered by the Bill can be harmful, surely it would not be unreasonable to have a test of intent to do harm prior to any prosecution being brought under the legislation, and yet that is not in the Bill. That is a vital part missing from the Bill, because that is about second-guessing people’s intent, rather than any concept of their wishing to do harm. That casts our net far too wide in law.

There are two other points about the drafting. The first is that the use of the term “activity”, as well as referring to a “course” of action, means that a single event—a one-off event, or a one-off conversation—could, if interpreted in a particular way by a prosecutor, bring people within the scope of the law. That needs to be tightened, and I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that if the Government are bringing forward legislation, that is something we need to look at, as is use of the term “suppress” alongside

“orientation or identity…in full or in part”.

Again, this loose language potentially comes unstuck when a parent has a strong and necessary challenge to make against their child in order to give them a different view. It could be interpreted very wrongly if this was the wording of any legislation.

Finally, I will say this: we are here to produce good law in the House of Commons; we are not here to signal to any one part of the population that we are on their side. We have to ensure that the law we produce has the intended effect and that that law is necessary. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will look at these elements closely in the days and months to come.

Post Office Board and Governance

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I think what we actually heard and saw was a dysfunctional former chair of the Post Office; that is what we saw. Interestingly, to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about compensation schemes, the former chair said at one point during his evidence that he had no concerns about the speed of delivery of the HSS—which was extraordinary, because I have many concerns about it.

I hear loud and clear calls from across the House about the role that the Post Office is playing in compensation schemes. These are sensitive matters, because people in the Post Office are employed to manage and administer the compensation schemes. I hear the point made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) loud and clear. We are looking at it, but I reassure him that all three schemes have independence in them: an independent panel in the HSS; an independent panel and a reviewer, Sir Ross Cranston, on the GLO scheme; and the independence on the overturned convictions in Sir Gary Hickinbottom. Both latter people are retired High Court judges, which should give claimants and the right hon. Gentleman, I hope, some confidence that the schemes will operate properly.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Minister has referred to Mr Staunton, who it seems had serious character defects. How was he ever appointed in the first place, and who provided the character references and oversaw that appointment process? May we have an inquiry into that?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Thankfully, not me. I have nothing against Mr Staunton personally. He had a strong track record as the chair of various large organisations, as he said yesterday. I think we would all agree that the Post Office is a specific organisation with specific challenges. Yesterday’s evidence from Ben Tidswell, the senior independent director, was interesting. He felt that Mr Staunton’s behaviour changed in November last year and became far more “erratic”—his word. I do not know the reasons for that specifically, although Mr Tidswell suggested some yesterday. Whatever the reason, Mr Staunton’s recent conduct is not consistent with remaining chair of the Post Office. That is why we decided to act.

Post Office Horizon Scandal

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am sorry that the hon. Member has taken that tone, but that is not true. As I set out, I think Henry Staunton has got this completely wrong. It is not the case, and there has never been any situation while I have been in this role—my predecessors have said the same—where we have tried to delay compensation. If the hon. Member wants to write to me, I am very happy to look at an individual case. Our commitment on the GLO scheme is that once we have received a full claim, we will respond to 90% of cases within 40 days. Some cases are more complex, but I am very happy to look at her specific case, as I have for other Members when people have contacted us directly. I am very keen to make sure that we get a resolution to her constituent’s case as quickly as possible.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on his tenacity in relation to this issue. When does he expect the inquiry to be completed? It seems that Fujitsu is hiding behind that inquiry and is unwilling to commit itself to compensating the taxpayer for the compensation the taxpayer will be paying.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point. The inquiry is due to conclude by the end of this year and to report some time—early, I hope—next year. At that point, we will know more about Fujitsu’s exact role and the amount of the final compensation bill. I welcome the fact that at the Select Committee Fujitsu acknowledged its moral obligation to the victims and the taxpayer in contributing to the compensation bill, and we will hold it to its promises in that regard.

Excess Death Trends

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Bridgen]

I agree wholeheartedly. This is not a political issue; it is a public health issue that affects every constituency. The so-called covid inquiry has already set out the answers it wants to get. It has all the appearance of a whitewash. It was deeply disappointing that it announced this week that the module on the safety and efficacy of the vaccines has been put off indefinitely—certainly until after the general election, which is extremely disappointing.

I contacted every public and media body I could think of in 2014 to tell them again and again that the sub-postmasters were innocent, but no one listened. I knew the sub-postmasters in my constituency were completely honest; anybody who knew those pillars of society knew it. The innocent were falsely accused of dishonesty over the Horizon scandal and were relentlessly pursued by a merciless, mendacious and malicious bureaucracy. It is the coldness that shocks most—the imperious arrogance and the mercilessness that capture institutions and cowards in authority when a single narrative closes our collective minds to nuance, to experience and to the inconvenient truths. No one listened to the sub-postmasters; no one cared. No one in power moved a muscle to help, but now, all of a sudden, one media programme has shifted the narrative to reveal that the experts were wrong, our institutions were wrong, those in authority were wrong and an infallible computer system was, in fact, fallible. Even our justice system got it so tragically wrong, with thousands of court hearings and judges making wrong judgments. Will the Post Office lessons be learned regarding the covid insanity?

Who is actually dying now? It is not the old and frail, as it was with covid; in fact, deaths from dementia, a key benchmark of elderly deaths, have been in deficit ever since covid, as we would expect after a period of high mortality. Instead, particularly for cardiovascular deaths, there has been incessant week-on-week excess mortality for months and months in the young and middle-aged. Every age group is affected, but the 50 to 64 age group has had it worst—I declare an interest. They were struck with 12% more deaths than usual in 2022 and 13% more in 2023, and at least five in six of those deaths this year had nothing to do with covid whatever.

My constituent, Steven Miller, was a healthy IT engineer in his 40s. He had two doses of AstraZeneca jabs in the summer of 2021 and was ill shortly afterwards. His side effects were so bad that he lost his job, and in November 2021 he was rushed into hospital. He now has cardio- myopathy and ventricular failure with a maximum of five years to live, taking him to 2026, unless he has a heart transplant. When I saw him last, he had a resting heart rate of 145 beats per minute. He has subsequently lost his partner and access to his child, and he is at risk of losing his house. He now has a diagnosis from Glenfield Hospital in Leicester of vaccine-induced cardio- myopathy, and I want to help him to try to get his compensation. However, he is just one example among my constituents who will probably have 30 years of his life stolen from him. His child will lose his father. How is £120,000 of compensation possibly adequate for that?

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for introducing the debate so coherently. Can he explain why module 4 of the public inquiry into the safety of the vaccines has been arbitrarily postponed from next July? Surely the case that he mentioned highlights the need for urgent inquiry.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that issue. Why would they put back any investigation in the public inquiry, which I think costs some hundreds of millions of pounds and therefore should be in the public interest, indefinitely? I fear that political pressure has been placed on the inquiry. Clearly, a lot of political capital in the run-up to the next election has been placed on the fact that the Government, with support from the Opposition parties, did the right thing in our pandemic response, including the roll-out of the vaccines. The very fact that they have done that indicates that there is something to hide, and it should make the public extremely suspicious. I will come on to that shortly.

For two years we have turned society upside down so as not to “kill granny”. Now that mum and dad are dying, it appears that no one cares. This is “Alice in Wonderland” thinking. People in their 50s and 60s— I declare an interest again—would normally, I hope, have many more years of active contribution and deeply fulfilling lives left to live, and they are the people being hit hardest.

Furthermore, the raw number of lives lost is not the only measure that we can look at. We have better methods, and the most famous is known as quality-adjusted life years—those who understand public health generally refer to them as QALYs. They measure healthy years of life lost and are the most sensible metric for properly assessing the impacts of deaths and lost life on families and society. QALYs were ignored at the outset. They were ignored in July 2020 when the Government’s own assessment was that lockdowns would reduce QALYs by about 1 million years in the UK—I repeat, 1 million years. They were ignored when deciding to inject the young with experimental vaccines despite the refusal of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to recommend jabbing under-15s in September 2021.

Even at the covid inquiry when the Prime Minister tried to raise the issue of quality-adjusted life years, he was shouted down by Hugo Keith KC, the lead lawyer at the inquiry. He then revealed his unbelievable, unforgivable negligence and ignorance by saying:

“I don’t want to get into quality life assurance models.”

This, I repeat, is the most senior lawyer at the so-called covid inquiry, so when I say that future generations will ridicule us, it is not hard to see reasons why. The pandemic—a term that some of our best academics from around the globe questioned from the outset in published and peer-reviewed papers—is over. The crisis has passed. Yet still, empty vessels continue to drown out intelligent, reasoned, expert discourse. Not knowing what QALY means is one thing, but parading his ignorance with arrogant disdain ought to disqualify Mr Keith from any further part in that inquiry. Sadly, his condescending disdain for open inquiry epitomises what many of us have encountered time and time again when raising these issues.

A smorgasbord of fanciful excuses has been proffered for the rise in heart attacks. Sir Chris Whitty laughably claimed that it was from a reduction in statin prescriptions, even though prescribing levels were exactly the same, and it would take years or even decades for changes on that issue to take effect and be seen in population mortality data. The media have tried to persuade us—persuade the people—that eating eggs or the wrong kind of breakfast or climate change is to blame. People are sick of being patronised with these lies. Some have claimed that the excess deaths are due to covid. The literature is littered with studies claiming that covid causes heart disease. Almost all include covid cases from spring 2020, when it was almost impossible for someone to be tested and become an official case unless they were sick and in hospital. Proving that sick people get heart disease more than healthy people does not mean that covid causes heart disease. Indeed, the claims can be easily debunked. There has been a steep rise in cardiac deaths in both Australia and Singapore, as well as the UK. Those countries did not have any significant covid until 2022, but they did roll out the jabs at exactly the same time as we did in the UK. Correlation does not prove causation—we have already heard that in this debate—but correlation with and without covid can rule out causation. The excess cardiac deaths were certainly not caused by covid.

Some have claimed that the excess deaths were caused by lockdowns. It is well known that psychological stress increases the risk of heart disease. The Government subjected people to a massive propaganda campaign of fear—well documented by Laura Dodsworth in her book, “A State of Fear”. We were cut off from our usual support networks. For many, there were immense financial pressures. Such policies could contribute to heart disease in a minor way. However, the sharpest rise came later, entirely coincident with the jab roll-out, so we have a clear temporal link between increased deaths and vaccination.

Some have claimed that the excess cannot be down to the jabs, because Sweden has not had as many excess deaths as elsewhere despite having a very similar number of doses, per million, of the experimental vaccines, but it is important to understand that heart disease is a cumulative risk. In the UK, we already had a serious problem with heart disease before the pandemic, and it has got much worse following the vaccine roll-out. By contrast, Sweden has the longest healthy life expectancy in Europe. It is no wonder that it is a statistical outlier on excess deaths now. If someone is under 50 and lives in Sweden, their chances of dying from heart disease were already half that of a resident of the UK of the same age.

Some have admitted to the problem but claimed it was worth it. Science journalist Tom Chivers even said regarding jabbing children: “It sounds cruel—but a small number of deaths would be worth it”. As I pointed out earlier, from China through to the UK, any culture willing to openly sacrifice children for adults is rotten, in my view, to its very core.

Look at what is happening now. Yet again we are seeing a peak in covid hospitalisations, as we should be expecting from a coronavirus in January. The number of people infected and the number of intensive care admissions were about the same every six months before and after the vaccinations. The number of covid intensive care admissions in the January to June 2020 wave was about the same as the number in the July to December 2020 covid wave, and the figure remained similar in the January to June 2021 and July to December 2021 covid waves. The jab therefore had no impact whatsoever. Those interested may wish to consult a recent paper in the Journal of Clinical Medicine that demonstrates exactly this point.

The next important factor is that omicron is far less deadly. The reason why there are fewer covid deaths now is because of omicron’s arrival at the beginning of 2022, but viral waves will continue to come and go until almost everyone has post-infection immunity. We are not there yet.

It is clear that viral waves were not impacted by lockdowns, and it is increasingly clear that they were not impacted by the jabs either. People have denied that viral waves peak naturally at predictable times of year, but how much longer can that be denied? The lockdowns did not cause deaths to decline from their peak in April 2020, because they also peaked and fell in April 2022 and March 2023 without lockdowns. Indeed, in 2020 infections were already falling before the lockdowns were even started.

The problem with excess deaths started in spring 2021 with the jab roll-out, and there was a stepwise rise in ambulance calls for life-threatening emergencies at exactly the same time. Hospitals started to be overwhelmed for the first time, and the number of people unable to work because of long-term sickness started to rise. Even the number of mayday calls from aircraft rose. Are we meant to think that this was all a coincidence, when we know that these injections cause a range of serious adverse events, especially cardiac events?

The excess deaths are the tip of a very ugly iceberg, and we have not even mentioned the world-shaking scandal of jabbing people who had already had covid, which, at a stroke, almost entirely demolishes the credibility of our public health policies during this period. We completely ignored natural immunity. That one fact ought to be a red flag of gigantic proportions, but no one is listening. I do not have time to discuss the fact that the jab was not pulled when it became clear that an incredible one in 800 doses administered led to serious adverse events and consequences. The rotavirus vaccine was pulled entirely after causing an adverse event rate of one in 10,000. For the 2009 swine flu vaccine, one in 35,000 was harmed, and it was then pulled from the market. The covid jab is still being pushed and it is seriously harming people, inevitably at a much higher rate than one in 800, because most people are being exposed to multiple doses of the vaccine, with the same adverse event risk at each dose.

Thalidomide, syphilis treatment and all the other infamous, appalling and shattering medical scandals are dwarfed by the iceberg under the water that is the medical scandal we are currently living through: the experimental, so-called vaccines for covid-19. It took 11 years after the drug was withdrawn in 1961 for the thalidomide scandal to be first raised in Parliament—11 years before the word “thalidomide” could even be mentioned in the Chamber of the House of Commons. I am not going to let that happen this time, which is why I fought so hard to raise this issue in Parliament, at a cost to my reputation, my career and the financial security of my family.

The public inquiry should urgently be looking at this issue. Instead, it is wasting taxpayers’ money on obsessing over WhatsApp messages while people are dying. As if that is not bad enough, we learned this week that the vaccine module has been postponed indefinitely, for no good reason. It is as if the inquiry is so desperate not to find fault that it cannot even look at what has happened with the vaccines. We need transparency.

Dr Clare Craig, co-chair of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team, has been doggedly pursuing the UK Health Security Agency for its record-level data on dosage, dates and deaths for a year. That data could sort out this issue once and for all. The UKHSA admits that it has it. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency admits that all this data has been released to Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna, yet claims that it cannot anonymise it for release to the public. A failure to release the data makes it look like there is definitely something to hide.

A recent poll in the USA shows that more than half of the public thinks the vaccines are responsible for a significant number of deaths. If there was nothing to hide, the anonymised data would certainly be released for analysis to stop the upswell of legitimate concern. The latest response from the Information Commissioner’s Office is that Dr Clare Craig has to wait at least another six months before a case officer will be assigned to this issue. That is not acceptable. They have released our health data to big pharma, but they will not release it to us. The record-level data must be released. Is it really too much to ask that the British public be given the same level of access to the relevant data given to big pharma companies actually responsible for the debacle? Those are corporations that carefully secured immunity from all legal liability—or, in this country, indemnity—from the Government before dangerously and negligibly experimenting on the health of our nation and the world. We are witnesses to the greatest medical scandal in living memory. The consequential fallout in trust, public opinion and public confidence is only just beginning. Continued attempts to shut down debate, flatten dissent and obstruct independent analysis can only delay the eventual collective shame. There will be a reckoning and we will have to try and rebuild trust in our health services, our media and our politics. We have not even started on that journey.

Before I was expelled from the Conservative party for voicing my concerns over the experimental vaccines and the harms I believe they caused, I met a senior member of the party who, after listening to my concerns about the vaccines and NG163—the midazolam and morphine scandal—told me quite calmly, “Andrew, there is currently no political appetite for your views on the vaccines. There may well be in 20 years’ time and you will probably be proven right, but in the meantime, you need to bear in mind that you are taking on the most powerful vested interest in the world, with all the personal risk for you that that will entail.”

I refused to bow to that threat and as they say, the rest is history. People have alleged that I am spouting conspiracy theories. I think it is a conspiracy; a conspiracy against the science, a conspiracy of silence and a conspiracy against the people—and I will have none of it.

Arms Export Licences: Israel

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent speech and for all she is doing on this important issue. I associate my remarks with the personal approach she has taken, because I have a constituent whose partner is being bombed as he tries to evacuate from south Gaza. Does my hon. Friend agree that, in addition to arm sales to Israel, we should think about arm sales to the US, Saudi Arabia and many other countries, and ensure that we tighten the licensing arrangements for arms manufacturers to those countries?

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a debate about arms sales to Israel.

[Zarah Sultana]

Thank you, Sir Christopher. Since being elected, I have raised the issue of arms licences for regimes such as Saudi Arabia, which used British-made weapons in Yemen, so I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The Bill I presented would suspend sales to not just Israel but the likes of Saudi Arabia, whose war in Yemen led to the death of thousands of people with, again, clear and well-documented violations of international law. In another example of shameful disregard for human rights, that war was also facilitated by our Government and is therefore linked to this debate. Export licences to Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the war have been worth a staggering £6.8 million, which is why I have repeatedly called for the House to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

That is why I am asking the question: the key components of those planes could be being used in the bombing of Gaza and the huge loss of life.

I reiterate what others have said: I find it difficult to participate in these debates without becoming extremely angry or emotional on all sides—both because I want the release of the hostages and because 7,000 children have now died. That cannot be right, and I believe it is a war crime. Anything that we are doing to give aid or comfort in this direction will ensure that we will be condemned in the future.

Finally, a number of us met Yachad today. We met with heroes and heroines from Palestine, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. They are trying to campaign for peace. As part of their heroic campaign, one of their clear demands is for a ceasefire, so that we can release the hostages and at least plan for the future in peace.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, I must tell hon. Members that the wind-ups will start at 3.30 pm. That means that the demand exceeds the supply, and I will impose a three-minute time limit. I call Apsana Begum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Apsana Begum]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We are bearing witness to this unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. It is there before us, so we have a right to know how many Palestinians were slaughtered using UK-made weapons; how many children were dispatched using UK-traded armaments; how many women have been slain by ammunition from the UK; how many schools, hospitals and refugee camps have been annihilated with the help of UK engineering; and how much profit is being made from death, destruction and war crimes. What is the Government’s price tag for humanity?

We are told that the UK’s arms export system is based on the principle of avoiding a clear risk of British weapons being used to commit serious violations of international law—

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. We must move on, I am afraid. I call Richard Foord.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I want to talk about parliamentary scrutiny of these arms transfers to Israel because the current system is lacking. There is a good attendance today and it is excellent that lots of right hon. and hon. Members wanted to come to this debate but, frankly, we do not debate arms transfers very often. One reason for that is that we assume that Select Committees are all over this, but that is not the case.

My contribution is shaped by having worked at the University of Oxford, immediately before being elected last year, on export controls and preventing Oxford research from falling into the hands of adversaries. As well as being shaped by that and constituents’ opinions, my view is also shaped by having been bombarded by Iranian rockets. The difference between my personal experience and that of many Gazans at this time is that I had sufficient protection afforded to me by a counter-rocket system, not dissimilar to the iron dome. That is clearly not the case right now with the air and artillery attacks going on in Gaza today.

Liberal Democrat policy in this area is quite straightforward. We believe that arms exports should not take place to countries designated human rights priority countries by the FCDO. In 2021, the FCDO named Israel as one of those countries, but in the 2022 report on human rights and democracy, Israel slipped from the list and appeared instead under the Occupied Palestinian Territories entry in the register. None the less, I am of the opinion that, as a state named in that list in 2022, Israel should not be in receipt of UK arms.

Briefly, the Committees on Arms Export Controls are made up of members of four Select Committees—International Trade, Foreign Affairs, Defence and International Development—but they have not met since March. That is outrageous, and we need to do something about it.

I am pleased to say that Committee Chairs—three Conservative, one SNP and one Labour—wrote to the Leader of the House to say that the system cannot continue, and that we need a Standing Committee to examine arms transfers, including to places such as Israel. In her response, the Leader of the House said, essentially, that there is no requirement for that, but I am certain that it is required; otherwise, we will continue to find ourselves in situations where the Government are caught out for transferring arms to a country that is clearly in breach of human rights.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. We now have Mohammed Yasin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has quite rightly focused on the horrific situation in Gaza, like many other Members. However, when I visited the west bank earlier this year, the rate of murders, violent attacks and intimidation by illegal settlers was already on the rise, with the IDF too often either refusing to intervene or even protecting the attackers. Since the heinous attack on 7 October by Hamas, the death toll has reached intolerable levels in Gaza and the west bank. Labour Members are very clear that arms export licences should be granted only where there is no risk that they could be used in contravention of international law. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that Ministers—

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. This is an abuse of an intervention.

[Kim Leadbeater]

Apologies, Sir Christopher. Does my hon. Friend agree—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

No, resume your seat. I call Nadia Whittome.

[Nadia Whittome]

I completely agree with the point my hon. Friend makes. It is not only bombs causing death and despair in the strip: nine in 10 people in northern Gaza have gone a full day and night without eating; doctors are heroically battling to save lives with no anaesthetics, antiseptics or even clean water for their patients. The World Health Organisation has warned that untreated diseases caused by the siege and the resulting collapse of healthcare could claim even more lives than airstrikes.

This humanitarian catastrophe is not a result of some natural disaster, but the intended consequence of the actions of the Israeli authorities—actions that our Government still cannot bring themselves to condemn. Not only that: while Israeli Ministers call openly for a second Nakba, our Government continue to license arms sales to the Israeli Government.

Last night, I was honoured to host in Parliament representatives of Standing Together, a movement of Israeli Jews and Palestinians united for peace, justice and human rights. One of its organisers, Uri Weltmann, wanted to send this message to our Prime Minister: standing with the Israeli people is not the same as standing with this violent, hard-right Israeli Government. Bombing hospitals and starving children will not bring peace to Israel and Palestine. We must immediately suspend the sales of arms to the IDF and end the UK’s complicity with the Israeli Government’s war crimes. I called for that in 2021, when Gaza was once again under attack, and it is even more urgent now.

We must demand an immediate ceasefire, the unconditional release of hostages and for the siege to be lifted. We must push for a proper peace process, working towards a just, lasting solution that protects the safety, rights and self-determination of the people of both nations.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. I am afraid that we cannot take any more Back-Bench speeches, so I call Martin Docherty-Hughes, please, to wind up.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Thank you, Sir Christopher; it is good to see you.

Let me be clear: the barbarous attacks on 7 October have no justification whatsoever, and Hamas are a terrorist organisation and a death cult. They should release all the hostages immediately before being prosecuted as the war criminals they are. Furthermore, the Scottish National party agrees wholeheartedly with the right of Israel to defend itself. That is the very basis of sovereignty and of international relations. What should not have to be said, however, is that that right to self-defence should be in accordance with international law, or even with the most basic aspects of our common humanity.

Concepts around collective punishment and the treatment of prisoners in wartime are not what those on the Government Benches might speak about on GB News as the preserve of the Islington set; rather, they have been central to the very idea of human rights and the correct prosecution of a just war for as long as those concepts have existed. It will therefore be no surprise, I hope, to hear that those of us in the SNP have no compunction about supporting the aims of today’s debate, and we thank the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) for securing it

Before going on to the substantive reasons for that, I would like to briefly touch on the most underexamined aspects of this conflict: its intersection with the tedious and self-defeating debate on immigration in this political state, on which the Government seem intent on taking up more time today. We have had months of confected rage from those on the Government Benches about desperate people trying to cross the channel in flimsy boats, without really interrogating the many reasons why those people find themselves in that position.

If we consider the numbers of global conflicts that have caused instability and forced large numbers of people to flee, be they those in Syria, Afghanistan or Ukraine, and how these flows of people present opportunities for people traffickers ready to profit from human misery or indeed, on a broader level, for our geopolitical opponents to gain potential leverage by destabilising our democracies, we might expect one factor in this Government’s thinking to be how to avoid facilitating the sort of actions that set those population movements in motion.

As far as the people of Gaza actually having somewhere to go to escape the bombing, it is to Egypt and, within Egypt, to a part of the Sinai peninsula that has only recently come back under the full control of the Egyptian Government after Islamist insurrection. This is the first potential domino to fall, in a series that could see the return of the sort of instability that we saw in that country just over a decade ago. If this Government—and others, I must say, across Europe—found the prospect of 20 million Syrians on the move across the Med problematic, just wait until we see that happening with 100 million Egyptians.

Furthermore, these events do not take place in a vacuum. I would beseech both the Government and the Opposition spokespeople who follow me to take proper cognisance of the fact that our inability to ensure that our allies abide by international law in this instance will have a direct effect on how other states choose to approach their own obligations to international law in the future. We may not like the results, because we know that, while history may not always repeat itself, it certainly does rhyme.

I had not realised myself, until recently, the juxtaposition of the Suez crisis and the Hungarian uprising of 1956. The Soviet tanks poured into Budapest to—

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. I have listened to the hon. Gentleman patiently, and I was hoping that he was going to start talking about arms exports to Israel. We have had to cut the Back-Bench speeches short because more people wanted to talk about that subject, so I would be grateful if he now concentrated on the subject at hand.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

It is part of the narrative, Sir Christopher, and, as an Opposition spokesperson, I do believe that I have 10 minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. If you are challenging the Chair, I am going to order you to resume your seat.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am not challenging you, Sir Christopher; I am only trying to explore my own thinking on the very matter that you have asked me to come to, because I think it is critically important for the debate, which the hon. Member for Coventry South has brought today.

The reason that I mention that in relation to the Government’s decisions, in terms of the debate, is because the then Government were desperate to accrue international support for their invasion of the canal zone—which we have all seen the repercussions of—as opposed to actually supporting the people of Hungary. The difference between then and now, and this is what is important Sir Christopher, is that, I am afraid to say, unlike in 1956, there is no serious difference of opinion between the Government and the leadership of the Opposition—although that does not include some of the Opposition Members I see here today, I have to say.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. I will order the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat if he carries on about the Hungarian revolution. I was at school with somebody whose father served in the diplomatic service in 1956 in Budapest, and I would love to talk about that, but it is not the subject of today’s debate. I will give the hon. Gentleman one more chance.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

Well, Chair, let me—sadly—move on, because clearly I am not being allowed to make the point that I wanted to make. However, I am sure that many Members can see the problems in which the Government and the leadership of the official Opposition find themselves.

Let me, sadly, bring my points to a close by reiterating my and my party’s position on these arms licences—I will be delighted to send my full speech on to any of my constituents, many hundreds of whom have emailed me about this issue, if they want to see it. Most of it will be of no surprise to anyone here today. The United Kingdom Government must do more than merely call on Israel to abide by international humanitarian law; they must be proactive in ensuring that no more innocent civilian lives are lost. The Israeli Government’s use of force has surpassed being legal and proportionate. There is a serious and pressing concern among the international community that states contributing to Israel’s military front may be complicit in the breach of international law and the death of over 15,000 innocent Palestinian civilians.

As such, Sir Christopher, we are asking the UK Government to cease extending arms licences to the state of Israel and to immediately halt the export of weapons or components, as has been mentioned, to the state of Israel, alongside our calls for an immediate ceasefire, the recognition of the Palestinian state and the support of the International Criminal Court’s investigation into potential war crimes.

But let us be clear: the United Kingdom will pay dearly for the moral equivalence that its current policy entails. While even the Labour leadership might not want to say it, we in the SNP are more than happy to remind the Government of this fact: violating international law may be a great wheeze to try and impress Daily Mail readers, but it has a habit of eating away at the state’s international reputation like acid. In this case, it is a great tragedy that the people of Gaza and others now involved in this conflict have to suffer so.

Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is a very serious issue, which I first raised in the House back in the summer of 2021, on 21 June, when I presented what was then called the Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill. That Bill was given a short Second Reading debate on Friday 10 September 2021, and at the time I described it as being

“about all those who have suffered injury or even death as a result of enlisting in the war against covid by being vaccinated.”

I went on to say:

“There is a lot more damage being done to our citizens as a result of covid-19 vaccinations than in any other vaccination programme in history. That does not mean…that it is not worth while, and I am…not an anti-vaxxer…but what is important is that, if people do the right thing, they should not be denied access to”

—reasonable—

“compensation”. —[Official Report, 10 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 630-631.]

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his campaign on behalf of so many of all our constituents who write to us expressing concern about the vaccine programme and, in particular, about the injuries scheme. Does he agree that it is very wrong for the media, and indeed colleagues here, to castigate campaigners for the vaccine-injured for being conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and troublemakers? As my hon. Friend says, these are people who took the vaccine in response to a call from Government, and they deserve the support of not only the health service but the Government themselves if they turn out to have been injured by it.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generous comments. He himself has been a valuable member of the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage, and he is right to say that many people—not just our constituents in this country, but people elsewhere—feel that they have been ignored by the powers that be. There is a glimmer of hope, in that during the public inquiry into covid-19, Lady Hallett, when discussing the terms of reference for what is called the fourth module of the inquiry—which will take place next July—seemed very much minded to deal with the issues that my hon. Friend has mentioned and about which I continue to be concerned.

In order to emphasise that this is not just a subject for the United Kingdom, let me mention a book that was published recently. I declare an interest, as one of the contributors. “Canary In a Covid World: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World” is described as

“A collection of essays from 34 contemporary thought leaders.”

In my own essay, I said a great deal about these issues, including about the failure of our own vaccine damage payment scheme to recognise that people had suffered harm and, in some cases, bereavement as a result of the vaccines. We could not, I said, continue to ignore these pressures. It was encouraging to learn about all that is happening in other parts of the world from contributors in Canada, the United States, the rest of Europe, Australia and New Zealand. I have here a House of Commons Library edition of the book, and I am going to return it to the Library, so if any other Members want to have a look at it, they can.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend for all the sterling work he has done on behalf of the people who have been injured by the vaccine. May I return him to his point about the covid inquiry and what Baroness Hallett said? I would not want him to give the impression that that means the Government should be able to leave it to the inquiry to deal with this issue, given that it may not produce a full report for many years. People need compensation now. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should adopt his proposal—which provides for a much shorter timescale—and get on with it, rather than using the inquiry as a get out of jail card?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend has anticipated what I was going to say later, namely that the Government need to take their head out of the sand and face up to the reality that this issue will be debated at the inquiry next year. People with the rights of audience have already made their preliminary statements. Would it not be so much better for the Government to undertake the action set out in the Bill now, rather than waiting for the inevitable next summer?

In a sense, the Government have been found out now: everybody realises that, contrary to the impression given for a long time, for some people—an unfortunate minority—the covid vaccines were very bad news. In some cases, they resulted in deaths and bereavements. The failure to face up to that is at the heart of my concern and led to my producing the Bill. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for sponsoring it.

Unlike many Bills that I have introduced in this place, this Bill has some explanatory notes, so people who look at it can see that what we are asking for is reasonable. It does not need legislation; all it needs is will on the part of the Government to act now and do the things set out in the explanatory notes.

As my hon. Friend said, this is an issue that will not go away, and it is now very much on the agenda. In the meantime, thousands of people have put in their claims, and those claims are being dealt with pitifully slowly. Only about half of them have been assessed. Some of the latest statistics that I have got—it is quite difficult to drill them out of the Government through parliamentary questions—say that, as of 19 September, 221 claims would have been successful on the basis of causation but fell short because they did not meet the 60% disability threshold, and 142 claims have been awarded because they did exceed the 60% threshold. That is 363 cases where it is accepted that the disabilities suffered are as a direct consequence of the vaccine. Is it not interesting that of those 221 claims that fell below the 60% disability threshold, some 116 would have exceeded a 20% threshold? Does that not show that the Government are being unreasonable in sticking to a 60% disability threshold, rather than reducing the threshold in the way that I suggest in the Bill?

In the response to parliamentary question 199355, which I received on 19 September, I was told:

“From 1 October 2021 to 1 September 2023…6,809 claims relating to COVID-19 vaccinations”

had been made under the scheme,

“and 251 claims relating to vaccines for other illnesses”,

including 15 for measles, mumps and rubella.

I think most reasonable people would say that the alarm bells should be ringing very strongly, because almost all the claims that the vaccine damage payment scheme has received in the last two years have been in relation to covid-19 vaccines. There have been hardly any in relation to MMR—15, as against 6,809—and failing to deal adequately with those 6,809 claims is actually undermining the case of vaccine confidence. As a consequence, we are seeing a lower take-up of vaccines. People do not trust the vaccines and do not trust the Government, and their lack of trust is centred around the way in which the Government have responded—or failed to respond—to the vaccine damage that has resulted from covid-19 vaccines. This is a very serious issue.

This is a serious issue. I just hope that the Minister will be rather more forthcoming in her response than she and her predecessors have been in the past. We have not really got beyond the point of the Government accepting that people have died or suffered serious injury as a result of the vaccines.

[Philip Davies]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will come on to this point, and I do not want to steal his thunder. However, the authorities are now accepting that people have been damaged. They would not be making these payments unless they accepted that damage had actually taken place. Nevertheless, in some cases the compensation being given does not cover the costs of dealing with the disabilities that people have as a consequence. Given how the Government coerced people into taking the covid-19 vaccine, without particularly warning them about the adverse reactions that might happen in some cases, does my hon. Friend think the cost of dealing with the disabilities caused should be covered by the Government in full, rather than up to the arbitrary limit that is in place?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. In essence, that is what the Bill calls for. At the moment, someone can put in a claim and it is resolved months or years later. Even if they are found to have suffered serious injuries, the maximum payment is £120,000, which is meant to cover all the consequential losses, the cost of care and perhaps the lifetime support that they may need as a result of those injuries.

The Government say, “Don’t worry, you can bring a civil claim in parallel,” but the civil claims that some people are bringing in parallel are being frustrated by Government lawyers. In some cases, months have gone by and then the Department of Health and Social Care has said, “You should be making your claim against AstraZeneca rather than against the Department.” However, essentially that is a claim against the same organisation, because the Government are the indemnifier of any liabilities on the part of the producers of these—at the time—experimental vaccines.

I will quote briefly from a reply that the Prime Minister gave to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on 22 March this year. My right hon. and learned Friend has a constituent who is a litigant; he suffered four weeks in a coma and has permanent injuries as a result. He has carers, with all the associated costs and loss of earnings, and the £120,000 does not begin to get near the compensation to which he would be entitled under normal circumstances. My right hon. and learned Friend asked the Prime Minister about the £120,000 maximum payment and about the arbitrary 60% threshold, but did the Prime Minister respond to either point? Sadly, he did not. All he said was:

“We are taking steps to reform vaccine damage payment schemes, by modernising the operations and providing more timely outcomes”.—[Official Report, 22 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 330.]

That was not an answer. It was hardly accurate either, because the outcomes are not timely. Many people have been waiting for more than 18 months for their application to be dealt with. There are many hundreds of applications for which the medical notes have still not been received. The Government, under pressure from me, said that they would introduce subject access requests to ensure that people could get the medical notes. Subject access requests have been put forward, but not in respect of every case. A lot of those requests have been outstanding for more than three months, against a statutory limit of one month. I do not think that the Prime Minister was correct in saying that effective steps are being taken to modernise the operations and provide more timely outcomes.

I turn briefly to what is in the Bill, particularly to link it in with the UK covid-19 inquiry. On 13 September this year, Lady Hallett held the preliminary hearing for module 4 of the inquiry, which, as I have said, will take place in July next year. The issue of the adequacy of the vaccine damage payment scheme will be fully on the agenda for that meeting in July. At the hearing, we heard from legal representatives of some of the groups of people who have suffered vaccine damage. Ms Morris was their counsel. She said:

“The primary causes of these injuries and deaths are: vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT; vaccine induced vasculitis; stoke; cerebral venous sinus thrombosis; and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Survivors are having to cope with the aftereffects of their injuries, including brain damage and physical disablement, whilst the bereaved are struggling to live without their partners, children or parents. All VIBUK members have a confirmation that their injuries were caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.”

That issue will be debated at the inquiry next year. Ms Morris KC goes on to say:

“In addition to their injury and bereavement, those we represent have also experienced a second trauma: a lack of medical knowledge and understanding about the risk and presentation of vaccine injury has left injured people undiagnosed and without treatment. Furthermore, the prevailing institutional mindset within medical bodies and the government has been fixated solely on acknowledging the benefits of the vaccine. This has led to those reporting vaccine injury to feel disbelieved, unheard and marginalised.”

She goes on:

“Censorship is a very real issue, my Lady for the vaccine injured and bereaved. Their support groups have been shut down by social media platforms and their experiences censored by the mainstream media. They have to speak in code online for fear of having their only source of support taken away from them. They face stigma and abuse for sharing their symptoms in the context of the Covid vaccine and even been branded as anti-vax for sharing very real and medically proven vaccine injuries.”

She then says:

“In August of last year the UK CV Family lost its first member to suicide and a survey of their members reported 73% have considered suicide.”

These issues are going to be debated at the covid inquiry. Why are the Government not doing something more actively now?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend, as ever, is making a powerful case. Has he had any indication of whether in the covid inquiry—or even his Bill; it was not entirely clear from my reading of it, although perhaps he will correct me—any changes should be made retrospectively, so that cases that had already been considered, either on the disability threshold or maximum compensation, would be revisited in the event of any changes being made?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. My view is that the changes should be retrospective in relation to those whose claims have already been dealt with. The relatively small number of people in respect of whom causation has been established but the disability threshold of 60% has not been met could be dealt with in a routine way.

There is also the bigger issue of whether the £120,000 payment, which has not been increased since 2007, should be updated in line with inflation. When I have raised this with the Minister in the past, she has said she is looking at it or taking into account the points that have been made. It is a blatant abuse. If in 2007 the Government thought that £120,000 was a reasonable payout, why do they now think that a significantly lower sum in real terms is appropriate? The Government are the cause of this rampant inflation, and they are one of the main beneficiaries of it, because they are refusing to index tax allowances in line with inflation.

The Government’s coffers are filling up as a result of these inflationary pressures, and yet they continue to be Scrooge-like in relation to people who did the right thing and got themselves vaccinated in the interests of public health but suffered consequences because of an adverse reaction. This is just not good enough. Will the Government listen? That is what I hope will happen as a result of this debate and of the pressure that the Government must be feeling from what will happen at the covid inquiry.

There are other points made in the submissions to the covid inquiry, but what is most important is that Lady Hallett and the counsel to the inquiry have made it quite clear that they will be spending a lot of time looking into these particular issues. No longer will the Government be able to avoid answering questions, as they are able to in this House when we raise questions and they can give us non-answers. They will be facing the cross-examination of the counsel to the inquiry and be held to account for their actions or lack of action. That is why, although the Bill obviously will not get a Second Reading, the Government need to take into account and act on the recommendations in it, because this issue is not going to go away.

I am conscious that other Members want to speak in the debate, so I will just make a couple of other points. If the Government are not prepared to increase the rate at which people can be paid, how are we going to get anywhere? At the moment, people who are sadly victims of the contaminated blood scandal do not have to show 60% disability in order to qualify for compensation. Should there be some equivalence between the compensation that is payable under the contaminated blood inquiry and that which should be paid to those who have become victims of covid-19 vaccines?

If we look at personal injury payouts under the Judicial College guidelines, a 60% disability is the equivalent of an above-knee amputation of one leg. Under the guidelines, that would give rise to damages—just for that trauma—of anything between £105,000 and £137,000. The consequential loss flowing from that—the loss of earnings, the health costs and all the rest of it—would be in addition to that. Does that not just show how paltry these sums are? It makes the case for a no-fault system. Why are we messing around with trying to establish liability? If somebody confirmed as being perfectly healthy has a vaccine and then suffers a lot of adverse consequences, why can we not accept that, in the absence of any other explanation, it must be assumed that those consequences were as a direct result of the vaccine?

Interestingly, Oxford University’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies has described the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 as a “no-fault compensation scheme”. Would that it was. If it was, we would not be where we are now. That is one of the most important issues that should be addressed the Government. Indeed, it is being addressed in other jurisdictions. Let us remember that for years the Government said that these vaccines were absolutely safe and effective—there was no qualification at all. Germany’s Health Minister said something similar, but more recently retracted, saying that he had got it all wrong and that although they were safe and effective in most respects, they were not safe and effective for everybody. As a result, Germany is paying out significant sums to people who were adversely affected. Our Government need to address this issue seriously and try to get back on to the right foot in advance of the hearings at the covid inquiry next July. So I ask that the House supports this Bill on Second Reading.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for not only a tremendous speech setting out his inarguable case, but the ferocious and tenacious way in which he has pursued this matter. He is like a dog with a bone, and I am sure that victims of damage from the covid vaccine are very grateful to have him as a champion for their situation. As he pointed out, I am a sponsor of the Bill and so I support it wholeheartedly. I would also like to encourage him to think about extending about its scope a bit further so that it not only deals with the damage caused by the vaccines, but seeks to try to prevent such damage from happening in the first place. Obviously, once people have been severely disabled or, as in some cases, have died as a result of the vaccine, that is no comfort; we want to prevent this from happening in the first place and some things could usefully be done to try to help in that regard too.

Of course, the authorities love to play down the fact that some people have suffered adverse reactions to these covid-19 vaccines. I am sure many of us have had contact from constituents who have experienced serious symptoms following vaccination. I am talking not about a sore arm, which many people suffered as a result of the vaccination, but about a range of life-changing conditions such as strokes, heart attacks and blood clots, to name a few. My hon. Friend mentioned Anna Morris KC and her submission to the covid inquiry; as she said, these are not normal side effects that anybody would reasonably expect from a pharmaceutical product. I very much hope that, when the Minister responds to the debate, she puts it clearly on the record that she and the Government accept that some people have suffered adverse reactions to the covid-19 vaccine and, in some cases, very serious adverse reactions. In some cases, people have died as a result of taking the vaccine. This is an opportunity for her today to make that clear on the record for everybody to hear. I can anticipate her speech in some regards. She will no doubt say that the vaccine programme was a great success and that it gave the vast majority of people a great deal of benefit. But that is not the point in this particular case, as my hon. Friend said at the start of his speech. Nobody is arguing about that. We are talking about the small proportion of people—it is a large number of people—who have suffered adverse reactions as a result of the covid-19 vaccine. That is what I hope she will address directly in her speech.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The point my hon. Friend makes is important. On 1 June 2022, in answer to a question as to whether the Government accepted that some people had died as a direct result of having received the covid-19 vaccine, the Minister’s response was that the MHRA published a weekly report

“covering adverse reactions to approve covid-19 vaccines”,

which were available on a following link.

[Philip Davies]

Quite. My hon. Friend is right, and today gives the Minister the opportunity to make it unequivocally clear that the Government do accept that that has happened. That would be a big step in the right direction and would at least give some comfort to those people who have felt ignored for far too long.

The authorities are of course playing down the adverse reactions that people have had from covid vaccines because, first, they do not want to pay up, as my hon. Friend has set out clearly, and, secondly, it was they who pushed these products so strongly to the public in the first place—or dare I say it, coerced the public into taking them at the time. It was of course coercion when this House, back in July 2021, voted to mandate the vaccine for care workers, resulting in tens of thousands of hard-working carers leaving their jobs. We also came within an ace of mandating the vaccine for all health workers. Just think of the damage that that would have been done, with potentially 100,000 workers leaving the NHS on the back of that.

In December 2021, this House voted for plan B, which introduced vaccine passports for large gatherings, among other things. As we knew then and as we know now, the vaccine does not stop infection or transmission. There was no evidence base for the policy. There was no impact assessment done on the policy. Thank goodness that that ugliness that we saw in this House was short-lived. I was—and still am—proud to have been one of the 126 who voted against that mandation.

People were coerced in other ways. People were told that they were not allowed to go on a flight anywhere unless they had taken two vaccines. They were not allowed to visit anywhere. In effect, everything was done to force people to take the vaccine. Whether that was, in utilitarian terms, a good or a bad thing is neither here nor there with regard to my hon. Friend’s Bill. What is here or there is that, given all of that, when people do have adverse reactions to the covid vaccination —in some cases, very serious ones; in some cases, sadly, people have died—the Government have an absolute duty to pay the appropriate compensation to people when they moved heaven and earth to force them to take it in the first place. In some cases, they forced people to take it against their will— otherwise, they would have lost their jobs. The Government have a duty to do something here. Where we are at the moment is just not good enough.

It is worth noting how shocking the treatment of unvaccinated people became. Our policies led to untold damage to their livelihoods and mental health. Friends and family turned their backs on them, because of the prevailing narrative in politics and the media that they must be bad people for making up their own mind about a personal medical intervention. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), one of the greatest people in this House, summed it up best:

“suggesting that these people who, for whatever reason...have chosen not to get vaccinated are somehow deserving of our bile is a disgrace. It does not reflect badly on them; it reflects badly on us.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2022; Vol. 708, c. 76-77.]

In black and white on the Pfizer website, one can read important safety information concerning the Pfizer/BioNTech covid-19 vaccine:

“Myocarditis and pericarditis have occurred in some people who have received”

that product,

“most commonly…adolescent males 12 through 17 years of age.”

It goes on to say that the chance of that occurring is “very low”—I am sure the Minister will reiterate that today—but, of course, the chance of somebody of that age suffering serious illness related to covid is very low as well. The Minister might not be so keen to point that out, and Pfizer does not seem to point it out on its website, but we should make that clear, too.

I raise that because—I hope the Minister will address this in her remarks—I have been rather alarmed to hear of a clinical trial for a Moderna mRNA covid vaccine involving healthy children aged 12 and up. That is not something from the past, from during the pandemic; it is happening now. It has been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and involves the Bradford patient recruitment centre, which is on the edge of my constituency, so some of my constituents could be involved.

I wrote to the Health Research Authority in August to ask what ethical rationale there is for the inclusion of healthy children in the trial, because it is known, and has been for a long time, that healthy children are at a vanishingly low risk of covid-19—they were at the height of the pandemic and they certainly are now. So far, I have not received a coherent answer to that simple question. But it has come to my attention that the centre has been recruiting children for the trial using advertisements that have not been ethically approved, as is required by UK law. Children can be recruited to a clinical trial only if they as individuals have some reasonable expectation of significant benefit when balanced with the risks associated with their participation. Potential benefits for adults that may flow from a trial are not a good enough rationale and do not trump that principle.

So, given that there cannot be any expectation of significant benefits for a cohort of people who are not at significant risk, what is going on here? Why are those decisions being made? It comes back to where I started: the authorities seem completely unable, and in some cases unwilling, to protect people—in this case, children—from potential harm. The cost-benefit analysis, if it has been done—I am not sure that it has—certainly does not appear to stack up.

I will finish by commending the recommendations of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch in the Bill. The Government have a duty of care to the people who have been injured by or lost loved ones to the vaccine, which they took because the Government pressured them into doing so. The Government also have a duty to prevent harm from happening in the first place. Failing to act on this will only lead to more harm and further damage to the public’s trust in authority. I hope that the Minister will, in summing up, refer to what is happening in Bradford and explain why that particular trial has been allowed to go ahead.

During the pandemic, the authorities did not go big on warning people of the potential damage or adverse effects of the vaccine; they were just interested in coercing as many people as possible into taking it. They must accept responsibility for those who have done the right thing but faced damage as a result. I hope that the Government will put that right today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

It is important for me to set out Labour’s position on the matter. Without the vaccine and the work of scientists, volunteers and NHS staff, we would not have been able to end the lockdowns and return to our daily lives. I am sure we all agree on that. Therefore, the shadow health and social care team remain extraordinarily grateful to all those who have worked so hard to build and roll out the vaccines across the UK.

However, while the covid-19 vaccination programme has been hugely successful, there have been some extremely rare cases of people sadly suffering side effects and deteriorating health with possible links to covid-19 vaccines. While serious and adverse events are rare compared to the number of doses administered, when they do occur, they can have unexpected and life-changing implications.

It is therefore right that our healthcare system and this Government do all they can to improve the diagnosis and treatment of those who have suffered from this. The yellow card scheme already collects and monitors information on suspected safety concerns, and a dedicated team of scientists reviews information to monitor the vaccine roll out. I encourage everyone to keep using that scheme, to ensure that information can be collected.

Where vaccine damage tragically occurs, it is right that individuals and families can access the vaccine damage payment scheme. It is important that that scheme is fit for purpose and that the Government act to make that happen. There have been reports of operational delays within the vaccine damage payment scheme. Those reports suggests that hundreds of people have been waiting over 12 months for an outcome, with some waiting more than 18 months.

In fact, following a question about the VDPS earlier this year, the Prime Minister vowed to improve the scheme, so I will be interested to hear from the Minister about the Government’s response to tackling those delays. Will the Minister confirm that the Government believe that the scheme is fit for purpose and whether they plan to update it? Will the Government assure us that the NHS Business Services Authority has the capacity to process applications to the VDPS in a timely manner? I urge Ministers to meet and engage with affected individuals and their families to look at ways to improve diagnosis and treatment and at how claims under the VDPS can be addressed more quickly.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

On that point, will the hon. Lady give way?

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I will, but the hon. Member has spoken at length already.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. Does the Labour party believe that the vaccine damage payment scheme is fit for purpose, or does it not believe that?

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

As I have said, I have asked the Minister to meet members of the families who are directly affected to see whether there are ways to improve the scheme, and how that could be addressed more quickly. That is the best step forward, and we need to listen to individuals regarding tailored support and where it needs to be improved.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to join colleagues in calling out the scourge of vaccine misinformation. Getting a vaccine is so important, especially for those who are most vulnerable. We must ensure that all vaccine misinformation is debunked, and that the most important message, that the vaccine is safe and effective, is shared. I hope the Minister will echo my remarks on the danger of misinformation. Getting a vaccination is too important for the health of this nation—indeed, this world—to be playing fast and loose with the facts. Although the Opposition do not support the Bill, we hope that the Government will tackle the issues that I and other hon. Members have raised, and address whether further action is required.

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[Maria Caulfield]

I cannot speak for Dr June Raine, but I can say that I take “enabler” to mean “enabler of patient safety”. The fact that, in a number of cases, the MHRA has stepped in means that it is advocating for patient safety and is not simply a body that processes applications for clinical trials or runs a yellow card system. It is willing to meet a range of groups, and indeed I suggested that the APPG invite it to one of its meetings.

Let me briefly touch on the issue of claims. As I said earlier, we have moved the scheme from the DWP to NHSBSA. The point of that was to speed up the claims, because the limiting factor in terms of turnaround time is obtaining clinical notes, and NHSBSA is much more able to gain access to them than the DWP. We have introduced the subject access request so that there is just one consent form to get notes from a variety of sources, from primary care through to secondary care.

To update Members on the latest figures, as of 6 October, 7,574 covid claims have been made to the vaccine damage payment scheme. Of those, 3,593 have been processed, with 149 having received a payment. On average, it is taking six months to investigate and process claims. Some will be outside that because of difficulties getting their clinical records, but the average is six months.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Is my hon. Friend looking forward to the Government giving evidence to module 4 of the UK covid-19 inquiry? In particular, is she pleased that the inquiry will be looking into whether the VDPS is fit for purpose?

[Maria Caulfield]

The Government are always happy to give evidence to the inquiry. My hon. Friend makes a good point. I have had correspondence from constituents and from people around the country asking for the covid inquiry to cover vaccines, too. We have talked today about transparency and about being able to have an open and honest dialogue on vaccines. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton is right that to give confidence to vaccine programmes, people need to be able to raise concerns, to raise it when they have had an adverse event and to feel confident that those things will be investigated and not brushed under the carpet.

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[Sir Christopher Chope]

We have had a preview of the Government’s response to the UK covid-19 inquiry module 4, which will take place next July. All I can say is that I hope the Government improve their performance before then, because I do not think the arguments put forward today will be very well received. Basically, the Government are saying, “It’s all hunky-dory. There have been a few delays, but we are sorting that out. We are not going to change anything, whether in relation to the £120,000 limit, the eligibility criteria, the 60% disablement threshold or all the rest of it. And don’t worry, the vaccine damage payment scheme deals with other vaccines as well.” That was how the Minister started her response. She said there were other claims being made under the vaccine damage payment scheme, but I do not think she has really comprehended—or certainly did not give an indication that she comprehended—the gravity of the difference. She talked about the importance of flu vaccines. There have been, between 1 October 2021 and 1 September 2023, 35 claims under the vaccine damage payment scheme in respect of flu, nine claims in respect of HPV, and 6,809 claims in respect of covid-19. Surely the Minister can see there is a disparity between those figures.

[Maria Caulfield]

I did not address the point my hon. Friend made on that. The difference is that around 93% of the population received at least one dose of the covid-19 vaccine—tens of millions of people. HPV and flu vaccines are targeted at a much smaller group; they are not open to the whole population. That is why, naturally, we will see fewer claims coming forward.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

If that is the explanation, I am sure that also covers the fact that only 15 cases have been referred to the vaccine damage payment scheme in relation to MMR vaccines, compared with 6,809 in relation to covid-19. If the Minister thinks they are all equivalent then so be it, but all I can say is that the evidence suggests otherwise and there are serious questions now about whether the VDPS is fit for purpose. That is why it is great news the inquiry will be looking into that issue.

[Philip Davies]

Was my hon. Friend disappointed with the Opposition response? They are usually all over real-terms cuts like a rash. Any time there is any hint of a real-terms cut, the Labour party is blasting about it at every opportunity. On this, we have had no increase in the payment for 17 years—that must be a world record real-terms cut—yet the Labour party did not seem to have anything to say about whether it should be increased.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern, but that was not the only aspect of concern I had about the response by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare). It seemed to me that she was still, essentially, refusing to accept that people have died as a result of taking covid-19 vaccines and that many more have suffered severe injury or other adverse health effects. The Opposition are concentrating all the time on the benefits of vaccines without seeming to recognise the importance of looking at those people for whom vaccines were not beneficial.

[Esther McVey]

Was my hon. Friend also concerned that, after I had spent quite a long period of time questioning the “safe and effective” covid-19 vaccine mantra, the first thing the Opposition spokesperson said, without any qualification, was “safe and effective”?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The Opposition spokesman was telepathic in the way in which she picked up on my right hon. Friend’s phrase. I am not quite sure whether the Opposition spokesman really appreciated the connectivity between the two. The issue about “safe and effective” is this. I can remember that when I got my first vaccine, the little piece of paper we got said, without any qualification, that it was safe and effective. Exactly the same thing has been identified in Germany. It has only been subsequently that we have been getting the qualifications so that people are now able to make a more informed judgment about whether—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has forgotten that he is now speaking for a second time with the leave of the House. This is not a speech, but just a short wind-up. I have indulged other Members here in order to facilitate the debate, but we must stick to the rules.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely, Madam Deputy Speaker. I certainly would not want to talk myself out of further business today.

May I conclude by saying that I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for being co-sponsors of the Bill and for their contributions today? I also politely thank the Minister for what she has said and for her willingness to continue engaging with the all-party parliamentary group. She came along to a meeting and answered lots of questions, and she has volunteered to take forward individual cases of people who feel that their questions have not been properly answered in good time.

Madam Deputy Speaker, this debate could go on for ever.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Let me make this absolutely clear. I am in the Chair: this debate cannot go on for ever. I know that the hon. Gentleman is soon going to conclude.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Exactly. I meant that the debate could go on in the sense that it will still be going in July next year, when module 4 is discussed. In the meantime, I think it would be best if I sought the adjournment of this debate so that there is scope to take it further on another occasion.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Mr Mohindra.)

Debate to be resumed on Friday 27 October.

Regulatory Impact Assessments Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

This Bill has not had the benefit of being discussed previously, but I think it is a very important issue and I am delighted that we have the opportunity to give it a bit of airtime.

Regulatory impact assessments lie at the core, or should lie at the core, of policymaking and public legislation. If the tool if a regulatory impact assessment is not properly applied, the quality of the legislation suffers. We have seen a large number of examples of that. Perhaps one of the most telling is that we have legislated for net zero without ever really going through the full implications of what it will entail. I have the privilege of serving on the Environmental Audit Committee. It is willing to discuss almost everything on the environment, but it is not prepared to engage in an inquiry into an audit of the costs and benefits of net zero. The Government should have introduced an audit of the costs and benefits of net zero before the legislation was passed. The same is true of the Climate Change Act 2008. It is also true of HS2. There was never a proper cost-benefit analysis regulatory impact assessment of HS2.

More recently, the Renters (Reform) Bill—which I see, much to my horror, is having its Second Reading on Monday—was published in May. It was the subject of severe criticism by the Regulatory Policy Committee because no proper impact assessment was produced at the time the Bill was introduced. It was introduced by Ministers who had not gone through the process of thinking through the implications of what they were doing. That is what the Bill before us is about. I had the privilege of being a Minister for six years or so—some time ago now, Madam Deputy Speaker—and it was very important, when introducing legislation, to think about the implications and consequences. That should be done in the first instance internally by Ministers with officials before it is exposed to public debate. A well organised regulatory policy framework should ensure that that is what happens.

The Bill is based on the fact that, too frequently, that is not what happens. Even more frequently recently than in the past, the requirement for impact assessments to be produced prior to a Bill being published has not been complied with. The consequences, to which I have referred, are that Bills come forward that are badly formulated and unnecessarily contentious. Was it not extraordinary that two or three weeks back, we had a statutory instrument in relation to the implementation of the Windsor framework? The Windsor framework agreement was back in spring. We were told that there had been insufficient time for the Government to produce an impact assessment of its contents. How ridiculous is that?

The Bill basically says that we have rules in place, but there is no point in having a command without a sanction. Clause 1 sets out in plain language a requirement that the

“Government must, on or before the appointed day, lay before Parliament a qualifying regulatory impact assessment for—

(a) any Bill introduced to Parliament by a Minister;

(b) any draft statutory instrument laid before Parliament by a Minister that may not be made unless it is laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament; and

(c) any statutory instrument made by a Minister and subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”

Clause 2 is the sanction:

“If His Majesty’s Government fails to comply with the duty under section 1, subsection (2) applies.”

We cannot have a proposal requiring that the Minister be locked up, suspended from the House or whatever, so I did the best I could, which is basically to say that the Minister would be embarrassed into action. That embarrassment will require the Minister responsible for the Bill or the statutory instrument in question to

“make a statement to the relevant House…as soon as reasonably practicable, and…on every third sitting day until a qualifying regulatory impact assessment has been laid before Parliament.”

If that had happened in relation to the Renters (Reform) Bill, we would not be where we are now, with a totally inadequate impact assessment that has been produced late and much amended; at one stage it was given the red pencil treatment.

My Bill would enable this House, and the Members of this House who take legislation seriously, to be properly informed. Quite often, it is impossible to get answers to questions about Bills; there are questions that should have been raised during the impact assessment process, but have not been raised; and Ministers are ignorant of the implications of what they are doing. That is why I suggest that this is a sensible way forward. I do not often say this in relation to a Bill of mine, but I cannot see why anybody would be against it—except a Minister who does not want to comply with the normal rules. This is a short Bill, but I think it would be revolutionary in improving the quality of legislation.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

This is not written into the Bill, but if the cost-benefit analysis in a Minister’s impact assessment shows that the cost outweighs the benefit, what does my hon. Friend feel should happen as a result? He will remember that when the Labour Government introduced the Bill that became the Climate Change Act 2008, they had done an impact assessment and a cost-benefit analysis. By their own admission, the costs were twice as big as the benefits, yet they pressed on with the Bill anyway. Is my hon. Friend saying that where the costs outweigh the benefits the Government should do something about it, or is it enough just to publish the analysis?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I think it is sufficient to publish it. It is then for Members of Parliament to look at what it contains, including the costs. My hon. Friend and I were two of the five people who voted against the Climate Change Bill on Third Reading. Why did we vote against it? Because we could see that the costs would far outweigh the benefits. We had read the impact assessments—well, I cannot remember reading them at the time, I must say, but I had the very strong feeling that we were entering unknown territory and the costs would be very significant. I am not saying that we should not bring forward legislation when the costs are greater than the benefits; I am saying that Members of Parliament should be able to take responsibility and say to Ministers, “Why are you bringing forward legislation whose costs will be far greater than the benefits?”

This debate takes place just after the Government have changed the rules on business impact targets, the provision on which has been repealed. Despite the Government’s policy of zero increase in the total costs of regulation on business in this Parliament, the Regulatory Policy Committee, which is responsible for looking at better regulation, has stated:

“When combined with the figures for the previous two years, the total increase for the parliament to date is £14.3 billion.”

That was in February 2023; I think there has since been an update. Having said that they would not increase the costs on business in this Parliament, and that we would have better regulation and an independent scrutiny process for holding them to account on that, the Government have found themselves on the wrong side of their own rules—so what have they done? They have decided to change the rules. They are now saying that for the last period, they will no longer calculate the cost of Government regulation to business.

If one starts with from a cynical viewpoint, one becomes even more sceptical after looking at the detail. I do not think that, at heart, the Government really want to be held to account by the House for their measures. They would much prefer measures to be nodded through with no questions to be answered: they would like everyone to be nodding donkeys. However, if that is not the Government’s view, I hope they will accept the Bill.

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[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I welcome this Bill. In the light of recent experience, it seems to be an excellent idea. It gives Parliament more power to scrutinise what is going on. A Conservative Government surely, above all, is about low taxes and deregulation, but unfortunately—maybe for reasons beyond our control, and we all know what those reasons are—we have had too many taxes and too much regulation. I will not deal in detail with the whole covid saga, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) has dealt with that powerfully, but the fact is that we all now know that there should have been far more consideration within Government of not just regulatory impact but every other kind of impact.

In terms of ensuring scrutiny of Government, we have the other place, and it does its job. We should be very wary of meddling with the structure of that place, because it seems to be able to scrutinise legislation more effectively than we do in this House. In recent weeks and months, I have been particularly involved with a lack of impact assessments in terms of my own constituency. If we look at all the borders Bills and the recently passed Illegal Migration Bill, we can see that some sort of impact assessment would have been very useful in determining whether that Bill was going to achieve what it set out to. I am particularly interested in how illegal migrants are going to be dealt with when they arrive on these shores, whether or not the Government win their Supreme Court case. There is an understanding that they will be illegal and that they will be detained, but the Government have now determined that they are going to send 2,000 illegal migrants to the former RAF Scampton base in my constituency. We are still awaiting any clear idea of when they will arrive.

Have serious impact assessments been carried out on the pollution levels that naturally remain at this base, which was originally the home of the Dambusters, for a long time was used by Vulcan aeroplanes carrying nuclear bombs and was used latterly by the Red Arrows? Surely there should be a proper, published impact assessment of environmental pollution and of security arrangements.

Apparently, these 2,000 migrants will not be detained and will be able to come and go, so what is the security impact on the 700 residents who live there? Interestingly, Scampton Parish Council has put in a freedom of information request to the Home Office about a community impact assessment, but the FOI request has been turned down by the Government. Astonishingly—the House will be amazed at this language coming out of government— it was turned down with the excuse that the Government need to have, “A clear space, immune from exposure to public view, in which it can debate matters internally with candour and free from the pressures of public political debate.” That is a reply to Scampton Parish Council, which is only trying to do its job; 700 people have put their life savings into buying a house on this base and the Government say that they need a clear space free from public scrutiny. The Minister who is sitting on the Front Bench, the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), knows all about this issue because he went through all this with a proposed migrant camp in his constituency, which is not now happening because it was a victim of the Conservative leadership campaign.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my right hon. Friend explain what he has just said?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I will not go further into former grief.

We are simply saying that, when it comes to housing illegal migrants, it should be done on the basis of, for instance, value for money. We have conclusively proved that, because there has not been any properly published impact assessment, it will cost the taxpayer more money to put migrants into the former RAF base at Scampton than to put them into hotels, because a 2-mile long runway has to be maintained and there are 100 buildings, many of them listed, including the office of Guy Gibson and the ones relating to the Dambusters. I have made the point about the impact on the local community.

I believe in transparent government and what I fear about this whole RAF Scampton episode is that this is not being done to save money or to look after migrants properly—obviously, it is not in their interest to have 2,000 migrants in one place, overwhelming local social services, the police and everybody else. It is being done because the Government simply want to make the statement, “Sadly, we have not managed to stop these people coming over in boats and therefore we are going to put them in former military bases, rather than in hotels.” But of course this has no deterrent value at all. We cannot do an impact assessment on what is going on in the minds of people fleeing various hellholes in the world, but I can tell the House one thing: someone fleeing Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan is not going to be deterred from coming to these shores because they might end up in a comfortable room in a former RAF base. So this provides no value for money or deterrence, there are worries about security, pollution and community impact, and no assessment has been made, yet the Government just carry on.

The worst thing is that I keep emailing, writing to or texting Ministers, but I never get a serious response. The parish council and West Lindsey District Council are treated with contempt and given generic replies. As the environmental enforcement authority, West Lindsey District Council put a stop notice on the Home Office a few weeks ago, and the Home Office simply ignored it and carried on working, presumably because it thinks the land is Crown land. If the Home Office were a private sector employer, it would be taken to court and made to pay huge fines, but the Government think they can get away with it.

My constituents and I are victims of a lack of candour by the Government—a lack of proper impact assessments in a variety of fields. We have seen that with the whole covid saga, of course, and above all, we have seen it with High Speed 2. We need not go on about HS2, but it is probably the biggest waste of public money that any Government have ever indulged in. It is ludicrously over-engineered and we are still facing the consequences of it. For years, I have been arguing for us to have a through train from Grimsby and Cleethorpes through Market Rasen and Lincoln to London, which would cost £1 million. I have been told, “No, no, there’s no money, but we’re quite happy as a Government to spend £100 billion on HS2.”

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am not going to go on and on about this, but I will give way to my hon. Friend if he wishes.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I do not want my right hon. Friend to go on and on about HS2, but does he agree that one of the issues now is that there is no impact assessment of the revised proposals, and there has not even been a fresh instruction to the Committee of this House that is dealing with it?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Above all, there has been no impact assessment for the poor people living north of Birmingham who live on the line, whose farms have been taken and who have perhaps been forced to give up a place that they have farmed for generations.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It is just amazing how we walked into this disaster: how no one questioned why HS2 was so ludicrously over-engineered, with the trains running far faster than they do on the continent, for instance.

Before I end, I want to deal with a matter very close to where we are now standing: this building. The whole restoration and renewal saga of Parliament is an HS2 in bricks and mortar. There has never been any proper assessment of what we have been doing. I sat on the sponsor board and I have been dealing with this matter in various Committees for years. I am now on the programme board, which reports directly to Mr Speaker. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been sunk into making ever more complex and over-engineered plans for restoring and renewing this building. We should just have got on with it six years ago, but we still have not come to a final decision.

We are meeting on Tuesday—yet another meeting in which we are going to be asked, believe it or not, whether we should have a full decant. I have been arguing about this for years. We are still talking about going to Richmond House, if the House of Commons ever voted for a full decant, which is totally unsuitable. We would have to rip out the courtyard and knock down bits of a listed building. There would be years of argument, another public inquiry and more delays. This decant will not affect anybody who is now sitting in the House of Commons. It will not happen for years, but still we are returning to the same arguments. The delivery authority keeps returning to this; it keeps saying that it is cheaper, more cost-effective, and all the rest of it to have the full decant. However, we have got on with repairing Speaker’s House and Elizabeth Tower, and we are going to work on Victoria Tower. We should just get on with the work.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising the R and R issue. This week, there was a meeting of the Procedure Committee to which representatives came along and in response to questions they told us that, if there was to be a complete decant, it would probably take between five and seven years to build the building into which the decant would go, so the works could not begin until 2029 at the earliest.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

As a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, what I hate so much in politics is that people are so casual with the expenditure of taxpayers’ money. I loathe that attitude. If it was their own affairs in dealing with restoration and renewal, they would just get on with the job. They would get various estimates and do what was necessary—the minimum necessary—to make this building safe. But because it is public money, we set up committees and create these huge bodies such as the one running HS2 and the one running R and R, with people paid huge salaries and making endless, over-engineered plans. It is frankly disgraceful.

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[Philip Davies]

My right hon. Friend makes a fair point, but I am not entirely sure that that necessarily follows, and I will give another example as to why.

I should say in passing that I cannot for the life of me understand why any Minister would not want to do a cost-benefit analysis of any proposal they were bringing forward. It seems to me extraordinary that a Minister would want to bring forward a proposal and not say, “Can somebody do a cost-benefit analysis of this, or an impact assessment?” Why on earth they would not want to do that Lord only knows, but that is a slightly different point. My point is this: what benefit does it have for the decision-making process?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Before my hon. Friend goes on to his next example, may I say that there is no reason why an impact assessment should not look at the behavioural consequences of a particular policy measure? One of my gripes has been that the Renters (Reform) Bill does not give any account of its consequences for reducing the number of people who will be making their houses and homes available to let.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I agree wholeheartedly. That is why, as I say, for the life of me I cannot see why a Minister would not want to do that impact assessment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

If I have to choose between the Minister and my wife, I know who I am going to agree with, and the Minister is on a loser here. Unusually for me, there might be a compromise option, which is that a cost-benefit analysis should be done, but it may not necessarily need to be done before the original decision is made. Perhaps that could be a fair compromise and be considered subsequently.

I want to come back to the reason why what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said earlier might not flow, though it logically should. She said that if we have a cost-benefit analysis, MPs can scrutinise things and make sensible decisions on whatever. I guess in an ideal world that would happen, but it seems to me that in the real world that does not happen. The House should not just take my word for it, because it did not happen during the passing of the Climate Change Act 2008.

As I touched on briefly in my intervention, when the Labour Government brought forward the Climate Change Bill, they did a cost-benefit analysis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have urged them to do. These were not meaningless numbers—we were talking serious money, and literally hundreds of billions of pounds were in the credit and debit columns on this cost-benefit analysis. It was not one with a few hundred thousand here or a few million there.

The Labour Government at the time brought forward the Climate Change Bill with a cost-benefit analysis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have wanted. The original impact assessment showed that the potential costs of introducing the Climate Change Bill were almost twice the maximum benefits, as calculated by the Government who were bringing forward the legislation. One would think that when a Government bring forward a Bill where the potential costs are twice as high as the maximum benefits, Members of Parliament would be fighting over themselves to vote it down. How on earth could anybody support such a ridiculous notion, let alone why a Government would bring forward such a Bill? However, on Second Reading just five MPs voted against it, when a cost-benefit analysis showed it was a non-starter.

What then happened was that Lord Lilley—at that time he was my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden—kicked up a fuss. I must add that during the passage of the Bill the potential cost barely came up—none of the Front Benchers from any party raised the cost, even though it was going to be hundreds of billions of pounds. However, Lord Lilley seized on the fact that the costs were twice the benefits and asked how on earth that could be, so the Government went away with a flea in their ear. But—would you believe it, Mr Deputy Speaker?—they came back having recalculated the cost-benefit analysis and having discovered hundreds of billions of pounds of new benefits that they had not identified when the Bill started its passage through this place. It was miraculous that they found hundreds of billions of pounds of benefits that they had not even thought about.

Either we should believe they were utterly incompetent and had not fully thought through the implications of their Bill before they brought it forward, or, if we are more cynical—I probably fall into that camp—we might believe they redid the figures and came back with some dodgy figures to make it look as if the Bill had a greater benefit than cost.

I am not sure the Bill succeeds on any level. The Climate Change Act 2008 showed me two things. First, the Government will come back with any figures they want just to prove there is a bigger benefit than cost, even if that is dubious, to say the least. Secondly, Members of Parliament are not even interested in cost-benefit analysis. If they were, more than five of us would have voted against the Bill on Second Reading. I am not being funny, Mr Deputy Speaker, but if you go into the voting Lobby and ask people what we are voting on, half the time they do not know, let alone know the cost-benefit analysis of what they are voting on, so I am not sure that a cost-benefit analysis would serve the purpose that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch thinks it would. Therefore, I think the Climate Change Act 2008 represents an argument against his Bill.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough was absolutely right to mention a third Bill, which was about HS2. Everybody has known for years that HS2 was a catastrophic waste of money that was not even intended to benefit the north. History has been rewritten to say that it was going to be some great thing to benefit the north. The last Labour Government envisaged HS2 in order to try to reduce short-haul flights from Leeds Bradford and Manchester airports to Heathrow. It was never intended to benefit the north—that was not the purpose of HS2. History was rewritten and if we listen to Andy Burnham it was going to be the saviour of the north. What an absolute load of tripe. The cost went up and up. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said, it went from £37 billion until it eventually got to £180 billion, and pretty much all the people who were arguing for it when it was £37 billion were still arguing for it when it was £180 billion.

In many regards, the only person to have a sensible approach to HS2, in terms of cost-benefit analysis, has been the Prime Minister. He said, not unreasonably, that he supported HS2 when the cost was £37 billion, but he could not support it when the cost reached £180 billion. That is a sensible decision for somebody to make, having looked at a cost-benefit analysis. The Leader of the Opposition will not be interested in a cost-benefit analysis—he opposed HS2 when it was £37 billion and supported it when it was £180 billion. How on earth are we expected to make sense of that? The decision making is absolutely ludicrous.

Politicians do not tend to make logical or financially sensible decisions; they make political decisions. They are not really interested in the cost-benefit analysis. They are interested in what it might look like in a headline in a paper, or in a campaign in a by-election. In many respects, the reason why HS2 goes against what my hon. Friend is trying to achieve here is that actually the Government had done a cost-benefit analysis of HS2. They just kept it quiet, because it did not deliver what people wanted it to deliver. Andrew Gilligan, who was the transport adviser when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, revealed that, even before the latest increase in cost, the Treasury’s cost-benefit analysis had shown that for every pound spent on HS2, it would deliver only a 90p return. Although that was the Government’s official cost-benefit analysis, they were still pressing ahead with it at the time, until the costs became even more astronomical.

Although my hon. Friend is right that cost-benefit analyses should be at the forefront of decision making by Government and by Members of Parliament when they are scrutinising legislation, I just wonder, really and truly, how often people care that much about it. I can only conclude that they do not really care that much at all.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Going back to the HS2 example, I was one of those supporting the objectors who wanted more of the track to go in tunnels. I was supporting them because I thought that it would push up the costs so much that the project would become unviable. That never materialised. Essentially, though, is my hon. Friend not arguing for additional impact assessments during the course of the project?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is highlighting how shrewd a politician he is and what shrewd decision-making skills he has. Ultimately, he was successful in getting the project stopped, but I cannot speculate on whether that was due to the number of tunnels. However, perhaps he helped, and more power to his elbow, because in places like Shipley we support the Prime Minister in wanting better connectivity across the north. The bit that works is north to south; it is across the north that it does not work, and the Prime Minister is absolutely right to focus his money on that. Whether it was down to the cost of the tunnels, I do not know, but it cannot have done much harm.

Finally, the other element of the Bill that I am nervous about, even though it is logical, is how much extra power it gives to what my hon. Friend described in a previous debate today as “the blob”. If we were to be, in effect, governed by cost-benefit analyses in the way that he envisages and in the way that I would like things to be done, I do not think that it is beyond anybody’s imagination that the civil service would, if it was particularly keen on the Government adopting a policy, miraculously produce figures that showed a tremendous benefit and not much of a cost. I am pretty sure that it is not beyond people’s imagination to think that, were the blob, as he described it earlier, particularly determined to block a proposal from the Government, its advice to the Government would be that the cost far exceeded the benefit. I am rather nervous about giving civil servants more power over Government decisions than they already have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

We are not going to relitigate the entire pandemic here, but it is very important to say that the Opposition’s position was to support the Government in trying to get on top of the pandemic. I think it is fair to say that, while we did that, we were concerned there was not always the evidence to support some of the Government’s policies. We took it on trust that they had those conversations with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and so on, but again, I think those things—the level of detail and the consideration taken before recommendations came forward—will come out during the inquiries.

To pick up on another point from the Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recommendations, it said:

“Our concern is that the number of qualifying instruments which have not followed the IA”—

impact assessment—

“procedure has increased and, given that no sanctions appear to be applied where a department fails to comply, there would seem to be little incentive for departments to improve.”

Obviously, the Bill would create an incentive in the sense of bringing a Minister here every three days to answer for the lack of an impact assessment when one is not produced. As much as I enjoy seeing the Minister, I do not think it would be a particularly good use of parliamentary time to have him come here every three days to explain why an impact assessment had not been prepared. It would probably create an unnecessary pressure to produce one in a rushed manner that might not actually be fit for purpose. On that point, the Minister referred to the Regulatory Policy Committee, which does a kind of audit of impact assessments. It has said itself that around a quarter of all impact assessments are not fit for purpose. If we are to rely on the RPC for approval of the way impact assessments are delivered, we ought to listen to its recommendations a little bit more. They are not always as glowing as we would like.

I will not detain the House any longer, but some important points have been raised.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

On the hon. Member’s last point, if he accepts that the system is not working, what does he think should be the sanction for failing to ensure that it does work?

[Justin Madders]

The answer lies in Members’ own hands. It is up to Parliament itself to object to or vote against legislation if it does not think the impact assessments support the policy direction. The powers have always been there. Members can turn up to any secondary legislation Committee if they wish to. I understand the thrust of what the hon. Member is saying with this private Member’s Bill, but I am not quite sure it is the right method to deliver it. What needs to happen is for the Government to instil from day one a commitment to evidence-based decision making. There have, I am afraid, been too many examples recently where that has not happened.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

This has been an excellent debate, and I thank everybody who has participated in it. In the Minister we have somebody who actually believes in his brief, and it is refreshing to hear him bring his knowledge and experience to this important subject. It was also interesting to hear the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) make it clear that the Labour party supports this as an important tool in ensuring that we have proper scrutiny and good legislation.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) for dwelling on the amendment of the Public Health Act, and the abuse of power to which that gave rise. I will finish in a moment with a quote from Lord Sumption, who has a phrase that encapsulates our concerns. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) spoke eloquently about the problems he has at Scampton. On the basis of what he said, I am almost prepared to come along with my banner and help him to persuade the Government to relent and allow his constituents to continue as they have been.

My right hon. Friend made a good point about restoration and renewal, which made me think about a question I asked at the Procedure Committee about how, when the cost-benefit analysis is done, we are going to evaluate the benefit to our democracy of having the House of Commons continuing to sit within the Palace of Westminster and not being decanted. The answer I got was that that is not something they can do. All they can do is tell us what various options will cost, but they are not prepared to evaluate the benefits of staying in this Palace and not decanting. That is an example of the issue that we have.

That was expanded on by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who as always brought an independent mind to these debates. He gave me a nightmare by reminding me of the Climate Change Act 2008 and the extent of that legislation. You will recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, that we were in opposition at the time. The leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron, felt so strongly about it that those of us who voted against it—my hon. Friend and I, along with Peter Lilley, Ann Widdecombe and Andrew Tyrie—have never been forgiven by him. Indeed, my noble Friend Lord Tyrie was told expressly by David Cameron that, as a result of his voting against that Bill’s Third Reading, he would never have office on the Front Bench either in opposition or in government under his leadership. That is the pressure that MPs are often up against in having an independent mind and not being a nodding donkey.

I finish by quoting from “Canary in a Covid World: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World”, in which Lord Sumption reminds us in an essay that

“Governments have immense powers, not just in the field of public health but generally. These powers have existed for many years. Their existence has been tolerable in a liberal democracy only because of a culture of restraint…which made it unthinkable that they should be used in a despotic manner.”

In a sense, that is what this debate is all about—trying to constrain the natural tendency of the Government to want to behave in a despotic manner. Mr Deputy Speaker, this is an issue that will continue to be of interest to hon. Members, so I would like to see whether we can adjourn the debate.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Mr Mohindra.)

Debate to be resumed on Friday 27 October.

New Covid Variants: Government Preparedness

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

I rise to address this Government’s preparedness for new covid-19 variants and other biological threats. Based on past experience, it is fair to say I am yet to be convinced that this Government are making the necessary progress in this regard. I will first address the Government’s culture before moving on to extant concerns specific to pandemic preparedness.

Hindsight is of value only if we are prepared to use the lessons it reveals to ensure that the same mistakes or misjudgments are not repeated. When it comes to calamity and loss, vindication brings only a bitter taste, not solace or comfort. For those of us in this place, and beyond, who voiced genuinely held concerns about the UK Government’s response to the pandemic, yesterday’s evidence to the covid inquiry from the former Health Secretary is unlikely to elicit any sense of schadenfreude—just a deep sense of despair and sadness.

The former Health Secretary’s testimony does not reflect well on those experts who allegedly gave him deeply flawed advice but, ultimately, he accepted that he alone carried ministerial responsibility for the “calamitous state of affairs” not only in his Department but in the agencies that reported to him, as Secretary of State. In short, he admitted that, when courage called, he failed to execute the responsibilities of his office. He is, of course, correct, but his apology rings hollow and does nothing to ameliorate the damage caused.

My abiding memory of the pandemic is the former Health Secretary’s all-too-frequent glib responses from the Dispatch Box to questions intended to be helpful and constructive. I could devote further commentary to his shocking testimony, but I suggest that might be better served by a Privileges Committee inquiry or other serious investigation.

The shutting down of dissenting voices was all too commonplace, and not just in this place. Innova, the beneficiary of lucrative lateral flow test contracts, put pressure on The Scotsman for daring to publish my valid criticism of the reliability of its tests. Despite scrupulously evidencing my assertions, with the support of esteemed academics, the editorial team could not withstand the very deep pockets that Innova had, on the back of billions of pounds of public money spent on its devices.

In addition, pressure was applied to academic and clinical staff who raised concerns about the adequacy of the UK Government’s pandemic response. Although I readily give my thanks to those staff for their ongoing encouragement and support, I am unable to name them, such is my concern that we are not yet out of the woods in terms of truth and reconciliation on these matters. That such a culture was allowed to flourish at a time of grave emergency is detestable.

Although it is clear that the UK Government must change, I see few earnest attempts to do so. I have asked too many questions on these matters to count, and I have led and contributed to multiple debates in this Chamber and in Westminster Hall, but much of that was for naught. Concerns went ignored and commitments were readily discarded, even by those few souls who maintained a position during the ministerial churn from Prime Minister to Prime Minister to Prime Minister. This may seem tangential to the matter at hand, but Government culture is central to organisational learning for future preparedness. In its basic form, the management of any infection is not rocket science, but each strand is necessarily interdependent and must be rigorous in both design and application. The continued failure to understand that fundamental relationship will fatally undermine any strategic future planning.

In essence, robust surveillance and detection should lead to prompt isolation of the threat, followed by the administration of safe and effective treatments, and supported measures, with further screening and surveillance repeated until the threat is managed. Get any step of that process wrong and the risk quickly spirals out of control. Relying on detection and isolation alone will not work. As we know only too well, an over-reliance on vaccination in the absence of robust surveillance is, similarly, a fool’s errand.

A recent briefing from the House of Commons Library set out the ambitions of the UK Health Security Agency and its Centre for Pandemic Preparedness. The CPP aims to ensure the UK’s future pandemic responses are effective and efficient, and that they reduce the negative impacts of health threats. The CCP aims to become the world-leading hub for all aspects of pandemic preparedness. In addition, the briefing notes that the HSA is working in partnership with the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to turbocharge efforts to combat global pandemics and emerging health threats. Those are grand claims, grandiose perhaps, but the question remains: what does this mean in the practice of disease management and control?

In my Adjournment debate on the UK diagnostics industry in May last year, I voiced my concerns about the UK’s lack of preparedness for a future pandemic strategy, whereas economies the world over were developing 10-year strategies for the same. I applaud the efforts of the HSA in conceptualising a detailed report and a tentative timeline to execute a 10-year science strategy. It emphasises transforming surveillance through genomic identification and characterisation of new covid-19 variants, and promoting the use of innovative diagnostics, which are promising steps in the direction I indicated last year.

However, there are still clamant concerns to be addressed on the implementation of this plan and the efficacy of the HSA as an institution to deliver on those ambitions. First, the partnerships section on page 31 of the strategy report that a

“10-year strategic collaboration with Moderna will ensure we are better prepared against future pandemic threats, including through an onshore mRNA Innovation and Technology Centre.”

What is the basis of this “focused partnership” between the HSA and this single specific pharmaceutical company and a single specific vaccine technology? Recalling the Valneva vaccine production debacle and the adverse impact it had on the Scottish based company, may I ask what the rationale is behind such a partnership, as opposed to a more diffuse and cost-effective approach?

During a Westminster Hall debate in January 2022 I raised concerns about the UK Government’s overemphasis on vaccination as the sole plank of their policy, noting that even with the vaccine success delivered by Dame Kate Bingham, they had placed all their eggs in the mRNA basket. That was, and still is, short-sighted. The Valneva vaccine was the only adjuvanted, inactivated, whole-virus vaccine technology, yet the UK Government pulled the contract just before the phase 3 results were published. They demonstrated that the vaccine was highly effective and safe. That makes it abundantly clear that Scotland does have the potential to lead the way for the world in the domain of innovation and vaccine strategy for pandemic preparedness, yet we are continually and systematically impeded by the UK Government in that ambition.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his persistence in trying to hold the Government to account on this subject. He refers to the culture, particularly in the Department of Health and Social Care, of keeping things to themselves, playing cards close to their chest, not having regulatory impact assessments and, in effect, as he says, imposing good ideas on the basis of heroic assumptions that are not being tested. May I encourage him to carry on his good work?

[Neale Hanvey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind intervention and warm words. I take them in good grace. He makes an important point. Assertations were made throughout the pandemic that things were one way and, despite interrogation, any understanding that they could not possibly be that way was continually denied. That was very frustrating, and I thank him for his encouragement.

In November 2021, Dame Kate Bingham called the decision to cancel the Valneva contract “inexplicable”. Do the UK Government still not get that? Why are they still not listening to the one person who came through the pandemic with their reputation enhanced, because she did the job she was tasked to do and did it well?

The British Society for Immunology has told me that it supports the use of all vaccine technologies where they have proved safe and effective in clinical trials, stating that a broad portfolio of vaccines is important as we move forward in providing protection against future variants. It also notes that mRNA vaccines were deployed first as they were the first vaccines to be approved. However, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has since approved the use of eight different covid-19 vaccines that utilise a variety of technologies, including mRNA, viral vector, whole virus and protein-based platforms. What is the Government’s strategy to harness the power of all technologies, considering their intended partnership with Moderna?

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Caulfield]

There are several ways, and I did try to set some of them out. As I said, UKHSA tests samples from covid-positive patients around the country every week and does genomic sequencing to identify new variants or variants of concern.

We are not currently doing international border checks, but we are working with international partners, so should a new variant emerge in another country, we can step up that capability. We introduced border controls on new arrivals a couple of months ago due to the risk of a new variant from China, but that was stepped down because testing showed that there was no risk to the general population. Waste water testing is also still available should it be required, so there is a range of testing capabilities to identify variants of concern and respond quite quickly.

Moving on to vaccines, we are developing mRNA capability, but not just in covid-19 vaccinations. That is one way of delivering covid vaccinations, but that capability is also being used for respiratory illnesses and cancer vaccination trials. There is the potential for that technology to be used in a range of vaccines, not just for covid-19. A range of different vaccines are available, and should a variant of concern or change of variant emerge, we will take advice from the JCVI as to which vaccine is best to use and which group of the population is best to vaccinate. That is an ongoing piece of work.

On some of the hon. Gentleman’s other points, the covid inquiry is obviously ongoing. As the Minister responsible for pandemic preparedness, I am keen to learn the lessons about testing capability, PPE, and vulnerable groups that may need greater protection in future pandemics. But we also need to be live to the fact that a pathogen could emerge that is completely different from covid, flu, or avian flu, which we are also monitoring actively. We need to be nimble in our response to any future pandemic. My concern is that we may just look at covid as the only future threat, but that is absolutely not our policy; we are looking at a wide range of threats, both in the UK and abroad.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The Minister referred to mRNA technology. Are the Government absolutely convinced that the technology is safe and effective? Are they in danger of putting all their eggs into that particular basket?

[Maria Caulfield]

We are certainly not putting all our eggs in the mRNA basket for covid, or for any other use of mRNA technology. Such vaccines must still pass the MHRA assessment in order to be licensed for use. As mRNA technology develops for other clinical conditions, whether cancer or respiratory illnesses, those vaccines will also have to be awarded a licence by the MHRA. It is not the case that mRNA vaccines are given carte blanche because they have been used in covid; they will have to pass the necessary research hurdles to gain licences for future use. We are certainly not just relying on mRNA for covid—although it has been effective and the technology means that it can react to variants and be altered depending on the variant. We are using other vaccines for covid, and working with other partners. I reassure my hon. Friend on that.

I am very happy to continue updating Members on the progress that we are making and any future booster vaccination programmes for covid-19 that will be running, and to update the House on the work of UKHSA regarding monitoring, surveillance, and future testing capabilities.