Covid-19 Inquiry Module 4 Report: Government Response

Clive Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart, and I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for securing this debate.

Today we must remember all the loved ones who were taken from us by covid, and all those who suffered so terribly during the pandemic and the lockdowns. It is for that reason that during the pandemic I proposed a covid memorial wood in my Wokingham constituency, where people could go to remember their loved ones. I am delighted that a wood of nearly 8,000 trees has been planted.

Those who suffered deserve not only our sympathy but our determination to learn every lesson from this tragic chapter in our country’s history. Time and again, the inquiry has confirmed the failure of the last Conservative Government. The Conservatives left our country vulnerable and unprepared. The British public will never forgive them for partying while communities were engulfed by grief, fear and isolation. Never can such a tragedy be repeated. We must learn the lessons from the inquiry and ensure we never return to a politics that ignores expertise and evidence. We cannot afford political leaders like those in Reform who would cut back vaccines, trash medical science and spread disinformation. Every party leader should commit to implementing the inquiry’s recommendations and to supporting the vaccines that helped to end lockdowns and save lives.

While today’s debate concerns module 4 on vaccines and therapeutics, I want to briefly touch on module 6, which examined the pandemic’s impact on adult social care. That report confirmed what bereaved families have long known: the last Conservative Government failed to prepare the county, and its failures on social care and years of neglect left the sector exposed, creating the conditions that allowed this horror to unfold. That is why the Liberal Democrats supported the bereaved families’ call for the former Health Secretary Matt Hancock to be stripped of his place on the Privy Council.

[Graham Stuart (in the Chair)]

Order. Could we concentrate on the covid-19 inquiry module 4 report?

[Clive Jones]

Returning to module 4, the inquiry highlighted one of the genuine successes of the pandemic response: the vaccine roll-out. The roll-out was, in the inquiry’s words, “an extraordinary feat”. The success belongs to our scientists, NHS staff, community pharmacists and volunteers who delivered around 132 million jabs in 2021 alone and created the largest vaccine programme in British history. The vaccine saved almost 475,000 lives in England and Scotland. We should never forget that and we must never allow anyone to rewrite history.

Yet the inquiry was equally clear that trust in vaccines must be rebuilt. Childhood vaccination rates have been falling for years, leaving more people vulnerable to preventable disease and increasing pressure on our health service. We must listen to our scientists, not to conspiracy theorists. Nigel Farage and Reform are amplifying the dangerous anti-vaccine rhetoric associated with Donald Trump.

[Graham Stuart (in the Chair)]

Order. Could you please refer to Members of Parliament by their seat? You have been here quite some time, so you should probably know that.

[Clive Jones]

Apologies, Mr Stuart. We cannot allow Trump’s America to become Farage’s Britain. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a strategy to combat anti-vaccine and medical disinformation, alongside a new drive to deliver record vaccination rates. Vaccines should be brought closer to communities through trusted local venues, including church halls and community centres.

The best way to honour the people we lost is to learn the lessons from the inquiry, defend science, rebuild trust in vaccinations and ensure that when the next crisis comes, Britain is not so unprepared.