Pub and Hospitality Sector

Esther McVey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) on securing this debate. As time is tight, I will focus my comments on my constituency.

In Tatton there are 89 pubs and three breweries that support 2,350 jobs, generating £29 million in tax and contributing £60 million to the economy. Recently I wrote to every one of those pubs in Tatton, following the Government’s announcement that an outdoor smoking ban was being considered, to seek their views on that as well as the wider issues facing the hospitality sector. The answers revealed common concerns: business rates, beer duty, employer’s national insurance rises and Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, which is on the front pages of most of the papers today because that will cost businesses £4.5 billion a year. On top of that is Labour’s outdoor smoking ban, which would particularly affect pubs that rely partly or fully on wet-side sales, suggesting the ban would cause a drop in footfall of about 10% to 30%—enough to close more of them down.

It was clear from the responses that the Government should think again and drop the outdoor smoking ban. If they are determined to push ahead, they should at the very least consult the industry and do an impact assessment. I know that is something that this Government do not like and tend to shy away from, but that is what they need to do. Can the Minister inform me if he intends to drop this policy? At the very least, will he consult with the sector and do an impact assessment? I was going to touch on business rates, but I will not have time to do so. I will just say that the relief that the Conservative party brought in needs to be continued until a permanent solution is found.

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[Gareth Thomas]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the prompt to get on to the issues around the Budget next week. He will understand, as one or two of his colleagues alluded to earlier, that I will not speculate on what will or will not be included in the Chancellor’s Budget. However, I can say that we recognise the very important role that hospitality businesses play in supporting local economies and communities, and we understand the pressures facing those businesses. When we were in Opposition, one of the biggest complaints we heard from high street businesses was the unfairness of the antiquated system of business rates. I apologise to him—I appreciate it is difficult to hear—but I think one of the reasons his party lost the confidence of the business community was because it had made multiple promises to abolish or reform the business rates system, but never actually got to that issue.

Business rates are particularly unfair for hospitality, leisure and tourism businesses which, as others have alluded to, create 5% of the UK’s GDP but pay 15% of all business rates. Not only is the current system of business rates unfair, but we know that it disincentivises investment, creates uncertainty and places an undue burden on our highstreets, and in the context of this debate, on pubs and hospitality and venues. That is why we included in our manifesto a commitment to reform business rates, and it is why the Chancellor has continued to commit to setting out next steps on that at the next Budget.

[Esther McVey]

I would like to take away some comfort and be able to speak with my pub owners and pub landlords. Will the Minister commit today to speaking to the Chancellor about business rates before the Budget next week? I want him just to confirm that he will be making the representations from today’s debate to the Chancellor before the Budget.

[Gareth Thomas]

I am happy to confirm to the right hon. Lady and the whole House that I will ensure that the Treasury and the Chancellor are aware of the comments made in this debate. She will understand that crucial to the future of pubs and the hospitality industry is getting growth going in our country—in particular, getting more disposable income into the pockets of potential customers of pubs and other hospitality venues.

That is one reason the Prime Minister has made growth the number one mission of the Government. It is why we have already taken a series of steps to underline the significance of growth, from publishing a Green Paper on industrial strategy through to the success of the investment summit last week. It is also why we have introduced the package of measures to make work pay, including the Employment Rights Bill, which the House debated yesterday.

I want to pick up one or two specific points hon. Members made, in particular the reference by the hon. Member for North Norfolk to training. He may know that there has been much frustration across the business community, including from pubs and hospitality businesses, about how the apprenticeship levy works. We have committed to reforming that levy and to giving more focus to the skills needs of businesses.

That is one reason we have already established Skills England, which will have a new partnership with employers at its heart and will transform the existing apprenticeship levy into a more flexible growth and skills levy, to support business and boost opportunities for those living and working in the UK—something the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) will be pleased to hear.

Interventions from the hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friends the Members for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) and for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh and the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) provide me with an opportunity to suggest gently that the Scottish Government might want to think again about their decision not to pass on the business rate relief to pubs that the Treasury in London sends them—

Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments Bill

Esther McVey Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for introducing the Bill, for the work and research that has gone into it, and for his reaching out and speaking to people about it. At the tail end of his speech, he talked about the phrase “safe and effective”, and I will start my speech there.

“Safe and effective” became the covid vaccine catchphrase—we will call it that—and it was repeated so many times over that couple of years. It cropped up everywhere: in Government communications, in interviews with experts and across a media that was only too happy run with that covid slogan—safe and effective. So ingrained did it become in the national psyche that to ever ask questions about the covid vaccine became very difficult to do indeed. Asking questions is a vital part of scientific and political debate. However, when discussing covid, we no longer appeared to be dealing with science—oh, no, Mr Deputy Speaker—rather, we were dealing with “the science”. To question “the science” was to risk being called and labelled a “covidiot”, or that most poisonous of terms “anti-vaxxer”. People who just wanted to query this new vaccine were closed down and vilified.

I looked up the definition of “anti-vaxxer” and was surprised to learn that it is someone who opposes the use of some or all vaccines, regulations mandating vaccination, or usually both. There were 246 of us in this House who, on 13 July 2021, voted against mandating the vaccines for care workers. That is 246 anti-vaxxers in this House, according to the latest definition. That is absolute nonsense. People were not anti-vaxxers. Other people have been concerned that families are losing faith in other vaccines because of the way that they were treated over the covid-19 vaccine. There have been drops in the take-up of the MMR and polio vaccines, which is wrong; people need to take those vaccines. But all Members in this House wanted to do was to question the new vaccine, and to have a debate on it, particularly when the House wanted to mandate it for people and for care workers.

My point is this: if we allow language to be corrupted in this way, and definitions of words to be bent out of shape, we lack the tools for nuanced debate. It is only by having a wide and open debate that we get to the central gravity of truth. We have not had anything like a wide and open debate on the topic of the safety and efficacy of the covid-19 vaccines.

I come back to the word “safe”, which means free from harm or risk of any kind. It is a word with an absolute definition. It is not to be qualified or diminished, yet we know that, like all medical interventions, the covid-19 vaccines are not 100% free from risk or danger. That is why the blue guide, a document published by the MHRA that gives detailed guidance on them legislation controlling how medicines are advertised in the UK, says:

“Advertising which states or implies that a product is ‘safe’ is unacceptable. All medicines have the potential for side-effects and no medicine is completely risk free as individual patients respond differently to treatment.”

That principle is replicated in the UK pharmaceutical industry’s own self-regulatory code of practice, which also states that the word “safe” must not be used without qualification. On that basis, and worryingly, both Pfizer and AstraZeneca are guilty by their own industry’s self-regulatory code of breaking their own best practice. They were found to have misled the public both by misrepresenting and overstating the efficacy of the covid vaccines and erroneously describing them as “safe” in press releases and on social media without qualification. How many other organisations and individuals are also guilty of misleading the public in that way?

We were told that AstraZeneca vaccines were perfectly “safe”—that word again—and that there was no evidence of blood clots. But the advice was changed on 7 April 2021 so that those under the age of 30 would be offered an alternative brand, due to the now proven link with blood clots. The advice then changed again so that the under-40s would be offered an alternative brand. A safety signal was picked up and acted on—thank goodness—but in Denmark the problem was picked up much sooner. It paused the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on 11 March 2021, after it had vaccinated 734,000 people. At the same time, 24 million people had been vaccinated in the UK, without the MHRA detecting a signal of a problem. Why were we so far behind the curve? Was it because debate had been closed down and people were not allowed even to question what was going on?

What about mRNA vaccines? In Florida last year, the state surgeon general recommended against males aged between 18 and 39 receiving mRNA covid-19 vaccines of any brand. My question is: what evidence was Florida reacting to, and is the MHRA urgently looking into whether we should be following suit here?

In July 2020, the Government published the “First Do No Harm” report, which highlighted significant problems. It stated:

“The MHRA needs substantial revision, particularly in relation to adverse event reporting and medical device regulation. It needs to ensure that it engages more with patients and their outcomes.”

It also stated:

“The spontaneous reporting platform for medicines and devices, the Yellow Card system, needs reform”,

and that the

“system is not good enough at spotting trends in practice and outcomes that give rise to safety concerns.”

What has been done since that report was published just over two years ago? Have these concerns been heard and acted on?

Dame June Raine, the head of the MHRA, recently said that the covid pandemic

“has catalysed the transformation of the regulator from a watchdog to an enabler”,

which does not exactly sound like good news for anyone concerned about safety.

Ultimately it comes down to this: the Government repeatedly told the public that covid vaccines were safe, and for many—probably the vast majority—they were, but plenty of people have suffered as a result of their decision to follow the Government advice and take this new medical intervention. Some have tragically lost their lives and, as was noted last month at the covid inquiry by Anna Morris KC, victims and their families have been marginalised and

“face stigma and abuse for sharing their symptoms…and even been branded as anti-vax for sharing very real and medically proven vaccine injuries.”

This is really quite unacceptable.

It is way past time that the Government do the right thing and follow the recommendations of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. It has been shocking to hear how slowly the vaccine damage payment scheme has been operating. Applicants are having to wait months. We heard from the solicitor Peter Todd at a recent hearing of my all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery. He described how 139 applicants have been waiting for more than 18 months for a decision on their case. This is excessively long, especially when people are injured and potentially unable to work. We were also told that 162 claims were found to have had disablement caused by the vaccine, but it was judged that those people were just not disabled enough to merit a financial reward. In many of those cases, the decision was reached without a doctor meeting or even speaking to the applicant to help with the assessment. In the rare cases that money has been awarded, the payment has not changed since 2007, as my hon. Friend has said, so its value has been eroded by inflation, which simply is not good enough.

In conclusion, I will make a plea for transparency and integrity. It is time to be honest with the public about the safety of these vaccines, and we must start by giving them access to information and data without further delay. We must also, as an urgent priority, look after those who have been damaged, or those who have tragically lost loved ones. We may then begin to restore the faith that has undoubtedly been lost in the authorities responsible for protecting and promoting public health. There are many unanswered questions and the repetition by Ministers of those three words—“safe and effective”—is simply not a good enough answer, for all the reasons I have just given, so I am delighted to support the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.

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[Maria Caulfield]

My hon. Friend makes a point. A review of the limit is not just down to the Department of Health and Social Care. I went to a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, where that question was asked. Of course, we will look into that, but I cannot give a commitment at the Dispatch Box today. We will keep it under review as part of ongoing business and cross-Government discussions.

Finally, I turn our opposition to adjusting the criteria for disability. I recognise that some hon. Members who have spoken would prefer the level of disability for the scheme to be assessed on a sliding scale. However, assessing it on that basis would run counter to the intention behind it, namely to provide a one-off lump-sum payment.

The current scheme eligibility of 60% disablement is in line with the definition of severe disablement set out by the Department for Work and Pensions in “Industrial Injuries Disability Benefit”, which is a widely accepted test of disability and puts it in line with many other assessments across the board. Very few claims are rejected for not reaching the 60% disability threshold, and in the event that an application is turned down on that basis, there is also the option for claimants to appeal against the decision and provide additional evidence. We will continue to review the latest data on covid-19 to ensure that when decisions are reviewed, the reviewed decisions are based on up-to-date evidence. When I spoke to the APPG, concern was expressed about the time taken to appeal against decisions. I have given a commitment that if an appellant has been waiting for a significant time, I shall be happy to follow it up if the APPG contacts me about any individual case.

The Bill asks for an adjustment of the provisions on awarding payments to include all cases in which there is no other reasonable cause for death or disablement. Such an amendment to the scheme would not be beneficial at this time, because the payments are awarded on the basis of causation on the balance of probabilities. As the criterion for the scheme is already established and is being applied by medical assessors to conclude the remaining covid-related claims, any such amendment would risk further delaying outcomes for all claimants, including those most in need.

A number of questions have been asked this morning, and I have tried to answer as many as possible. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) asked about the MHRA. I hope I can reassure her by saying that following the Julia Cumberlege report “First Do No Harm”, there have been significant changes at the MHRA. I am pleased that it reviewed the AstraZeneca vaccine and made two changes based on evidence, but I can give reassurances about other medicines as well. The MHRA has had a significant influence on the recent statutory instrument concerning the use of sodium valproate, which is used mainly for epilepsy but can cause harm during pregnancy. There have been a number of such pregnancies. The MHRA met campaign groups such as In-FACT—the Independent Fetal Anticonvulsant Trust—and as a result of its influence, the SI provides that sodium valproate can be dispensed only in the manufacturer’s original packaging, so that women are aware of the risks. That is an example of the way in which the MHRA is changing. As Dr June Raine said, it is not just a regulator now; it is part and parcel of the patient safety framework around medicines. I hope that that provides some reassurance.

[Esther McVey]

Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am that the head of the MHRA has said that the covid pandemic catalysed the transformation of that regulator from watchdog—which it should be—to enabler? It has shifted its purpose significantly.

[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.

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[Maria Caulfield]

Absolutely. I will finish my points to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and then come back to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. It is for the inquiry to decide what it investigates, but it would be helpful for vaccines to be discussed at the inquiry, so that people can put their concerns forward and so that we have a thorough look at the vaccine programme. That will enable us to learn lessons for the future, should we ever need to roll out a vaccine programme on that scale ever again.

To touch on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, I worked in clinical trials before I came into this place, and there are strict rules about posters advertising clinical trials, particularly for children. I do not know the details of the particular trial he is talking about, but if he has concerns about how it is being recruited to, that is a matter for the MHRA. I suggest that he contacts the MHRA, or I would be happy to discuss it with him after the debate.

[Esther McVey]

That point goes back to what I said about the MHRA moving from watchdog to enabler. I would like the role of that watchdog to be looked at.

[Maria Caulfield]

I hear that loud and clear from my right hon. Friend. I would just say that when advertising and recruiting for a clinical trial, any posters—I have not done this for a couple of years now—would usually have to be submitted to the MHRA for approval, and it is important to know whether that has happened in this case. We can certainly look at that after the debate.

To close, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has made some good, valid points about the safety of vaccines and about encouraging people to come forward. We want people to come forward if they feel they have had side effects from the vaccine. It helps build up the profile and enables better decision-making for the future. He also made points about the vaccine damage payment scheme. We recognised that the process was taking too long, and that is why we moved it from the DWP to the NHS. We recognised that there were multiple requests for access to patient notes, which is why we brought in the subject access request forms. We want to ensure that those who have, on rare occasions, experienced side effects can access the scheme. Unfortunately, we cannot support the Bill at this time, because our focus must remain on improving the operation of the scheme and continuing to process claims as quickly as possible, but I very much welcome the debate today.

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[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—

Regulatory Impact Assessments Bill

Esther McVey Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on his Bill. As he suggested, it focuses all our minds, including that of the Minister, on the impact of the rules, regulations and laws that we make in the House.

I want to look at the Bill with a view to reforming the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to provide the democratic checks and balances that would allow better decision making in future emergencies. As my hon. Friend said, there was, from the very start, a failure to weigh up the potential benefits of, for example, lockdowns and closing schools and balance them against the costs, which have proved catastrophic. Robust benefit and cost-benefit analyses should have been carried out, and should have played a crucial role in getting the balance right when it came to what rules, regulations and laws were to be introduced.

Whatever views may be held on such far-reaching measures, it should be completely uncontroversial to want to conduct an analysis of potential policy consequences—and experts did predict that the lockdown measures would have dire consequences. In fact, the Government said themselves, in a report published in July 2020, that more than 200,000 lives could be lost as a result of lockdown. Cost-benefit analyses, impact assessments and benefit-versus-benefit analyses of health and mental health education should have been carried out, and politicians should have carried out a 360° review of the lockdown measures.

Only this week, the covid inquiry heard evidence from Professor Mark Woolhouse in which he described lockdowns not as a public health policy, but as a failure of public health policy. They were, in fact, a failure that could only have been implemented under the Public Health Act. Do Members really want to risk allowing such a failure of public health policy to occur again in the future by leaving in place an Act that will allow a Government to shut down society without scrutiny or debate—without looking at the impact of the measures being taken—or do they want to take simple precautions that would prevent that? If we are being honest, we must conclude that this was not just a public health policy failure, as Professor Mark Woolhouse said; our entire democratic system failed us, just when we needed it most.

Some of us raised concerns at an early stage about the removal of parliamentary oversight, feeling that the Government were using loopholes in the Public Health Act to regulate without being held responsible. There were precious few opportunities to hold Ministers to account. In normal times, if a Minister is unable to present a persuasive case for his or her actions we have a chance to vote down the regulations involved, but that important due process all but collapsed in March 2020.

We discussed this topic earlier in the year at a session of the all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery, during which we heard from Lord Sumption., a former Supreme Court judge. He described the way in which Parliament had been effectively rendered impotent under the Public Health Act, which had allowed Ministers to avoid the proper debate and scrutiny that we would previously have expected. For example, the first lockdown order was made on 26 March 2020, but was not considered in this place until 11 May. Is it really appropriate for policies that have such a severe impact on every bit of people’s daily lives to be implemented without such scrutiny, and some sort of scrutiny afterwards?

The Public Health Act was designed to authorise bans on mass gatherings, isolate infectious people and close infected premises. There is nothing in it about locking down an entire nation, whether infected or not, in their own homes. The Act should be amended to make sure that any future emergency measures are debated before they come into effect. If the situation is too urgent, measures should be provisional for, say, seven days, with Parliament being recalled if necessary to give the proper approval.

We cannot have the threat of such far-reaching measures hanging over society, ready to be imposed by a Minister with no notice, without having to defend their decisions at the Dispatch Box. That threat is made very real by the spectre of the World Health Organisation pandemic treaty and the amendments to the International Health Regulations 2005, both of which the UK will be asked to adopt next May.

It seems likely that lockdown will be considered as a public health intervention in future, with the Public Health Act as it stands. We must make sure that we have debate and scrutiny and that we do this impact assessment before lockdowns happen again, because they cause such disruption to livelihoods, education, healthcare and life itself. We all have constituents with heartbreaking stories of not being able to share the joy of a child being born or not being by the side of a dying loved one; of children who now have severe mental health issues or who have lost education; and of livelihoods and futures that have been ruined.

Of course, Parliament must have access to emergency powers in extreme situations, but their use must be limited to when they are truly needed. Surely that is the only way to proceed. We must be able to have scrutiny in the House—it must not be missing; it must not be avoided. We have scrutiny to ensure that laws and regulations are the best they can be. Surely this is the only way to proceed without such significant breaches of personal life.

Amending the Public Health Act will help us to make better, more confident decisions in the event of any future crisis. I commend what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is doing about an impact assessment to make sure that Ministers truly understand what they are putting in place before they do it—something that was lacking during the covid lockdown.

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[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.

[Esther McVey]

I do not think there will ever be enough scrutiny of what went on with HS2. Is my right hon. Friend concerned at all that the cost went up from about £36 billion to—if Lord Berkeley, the Labour peer in the other place, is to be believed—£180 billion? Thankfully, it was stopped, but is my right hon. Friend concerned that an impact assessment was not done on those staggering changes of cost?

[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 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.

[Esther McVey]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that, should the House decant somewhere else, it may be to an inferior Chamber? It may be not as secure or safe. In such an inferior Chamber, everything we are talking about here—full scrutiny, proper debates and being held to account—might be overlooked, just as how we were not holding the Government to account during the lockdown period, when we missed some debates and some votes.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We all know how a Chamber is so important. We saw that through the extraordinarily anaemic debates we had during the whole covid period, when there was, frankly, an appalling lack of scrutiny of the Government.

The Bill is extremely timely. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I cannot understand why the Government will not accept it, but I am sure that in a few moments this eminently sensible Minister will give it the green light.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Government would do well to listen to the former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who I think was in that role for nine years, particularly about how we should better protect and better care about precious taxpayers’ money, which seems to be frittered away willy-nilly by politicians across the House—that is not a party political point.

I am conflicted. On the face of it, this seems like such an obvious thing to do. At face value, the Bill seems to be one of those where we think, “How on earth could anyone object to a Minister having to bring forward a cost-benefit analysis and impact assessment for any legislation they introduce?” But I am not sure that it is quite as simple as that. I will try to explain why and give some examples.

We have heard some examples, which are all interesting case studies about the pros and cons of what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) is proposing, and perhaps some of the reasons why, even if it were introduced, it would end up being completely pointless and meaningless and serve no purpose at all. The first example is about covid, as mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). She was right to do so, and it is good for my welfare to say that she was absolutely right in everything she said—I would not dream of saying otherwise. It was astonishing that the Government not only did not do a cost-benefit analysis of the most draconian restrictions on our freedoms that anyone can remember, but freely admitted that they had not done so. They looked at any Member of Parliament who asked for a cost-benefit analysis as if they had three heads—as if that was the most ridiculous thing in the world to ask for. Of course they should have done a cost-benefit analysis. Had they done so, with an impact assessment, they certainly would not have concluded that locking down the country for two years would be a good thing to do, not only because of the effect of locking down schools on children’s education, mental health and all the rest of it, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned, but because of the impact on the economy.

All the problems that we have seen in the economy since the pandemic have been because of the lockdown. The consequences of lockdown, and of coming out of it, are the main reasons why we have such high inflation. All of that was easily predictable, but neither the Government nor the Opposition seemed interested in what might come afterwards. Nobody could see beyond the end of their noses. That is basically the issue: nobody was prepared even to have the debate about what long-term impact the lockdown would have on the economy, on people’s finances, on NHS waiting times—the list goes on. Nobody was interested. Anybody who raised those concerns—even worse, some of us voted against the restrictions and lockdowns—was vilified for doing so. Everything that we predicted has come to pass, but Ministers were not interested.

It is even worse in many respects. The so-called experts on whom the Government were relying, who modelled how many people would die if we did not have lockdowns, and came out with all that absolute tripe at the time, have been giving evidence to the covid inquiry. It seems from what has been said that, in all that modelling, they did not even take into account how Government advice would change people’s behaviour without the need to introduce a law to force that change. They had not even looked at that. How on earth can we get to the point where supposedly intelligent experts did not even consider the impact on people’s behaviour of the Government saying, “We will not introduce any laws, but we think you should avoid close contact with elderly people and keep a two-metre distance”? In that sense, of course it would be right for the Government to conduct robust cost-benefit analyses and impact assessments when they come to decisions. We might hope that, if they did so, they would not come up with such ridiculous decisions as locking down the country for two years.

That also lies at the heart of my reservations about the Bill, which I relayed in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch when I asked whether, if a Government introduced a cost-benefit analysis and the cost was seen to outweigh the benefit, they would therefore be obliged not to bring forward that measure. My hon. Friend said that, no, they would still be free to bring forward that measure and it would be up to Members of Parliament to take that analysis into account. Somewhere therein lies the flaw in my hon. Friend’s plan, for a number of reasons that I will touch on.

The first is that, based on my covid analysis, the cost-benefit analysis would presumably have been done by the so-called experts, but they would not even have taken some costs into account anyway. Their cost-benefit analysis would not even have factored in whether or not the Government just advising people to do something would have changed behaviour—they had not thought about that—so how on earth could they be involved in a cost-benefit analysis? It would have been flawed in that sense. How much trust could we put in it? I do not really know. I think that my hon. Friend is, in effect, placing greater confidence in cost-benefit analyses than perhaps they deserve. He seems to be hanging his hat on them.

[Esther McVey]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

I had better.

[Esther McVey]

Surely, if a cost-benefit analysis came forward in one way or another and was scrutinised on the Floor of the House, people could probe it and point out the failures within it. Without one, there is no opportunity to do even that. Would it not at least be a step in the right direction to make sure there is an impact assessment and cost-benefit analysis, because at least then we could have debated those for lockdown on the Floor of the House?

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

The Minister makes a fair point. Perhaps it is one of the reasons that I am perhaps not quite as persuaded as I would normally be by one of the Bills from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. I want to come back to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton.

[Esther McVey]

I am not sure whether I could have intervened on the Minister there, but there should have been a cost-benefit analysis of industrial action, so that the public knew exactly how detrimental those strikes were, particularly on the railways, with the drop in productivity of the whole country. I do not agree that there are times when we should not do a cost-benefit analysis.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for introducing this Bill. This has been a wide-ranging debate that has covered a whole range of topics, but it is, at heart, about accountability for Government decisions, and it is clear that there are concerns about that.

It is worth drawing the House’s attention to the report of the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of 10 October 2022, entitled “Losing Impact: why the Government’s impact assessment system is failing Parliament and the public”. I know that minds were probably elsewhere around that time last year, but it is a very important report, and it draws on many of the points that have been raised today. The executive summary of the report said:

“In 2017, we noted that there had been some improvement in the quality of Impact Assessments (IA) provided with secondary legislation. Unfortunately, this improvement has not survived the dual challenges of Brexit and the pandemic, during which time the speed of legislating meant that corners were cut. We had hoped that the return to more normal working would provide an opportunity not just to reinstate the previous IA system but to improve it: this has not happened.”

To pick up on the points raised by the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), as the shadow Health Minister at the time I spent an awful lot of days on the Committee corridor opposite the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). Unfortunately, he is not here now, but I am sure he will recall fondly a number of occasions on which we drew to his attention the fact that many of the regulations introduced under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 had no impact assessment and very little information to back up the decisions that had been made. We understood at the start of the pandemic why that was not always possible, but as time moved on, it felt that that was a pattern that did not have any justification. This matter is not limited to public health regulations.

[Esther McVey]

Does the hon. Member agree that we need to change the 1984 Act so that we do not bypass the House and go into lockdowns without full scrutiny by all Members of this House?

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

That is a bit rich from a Minister of a Government who did not introduce any impact assessments when they first brought in the lockdowns or various restrictions. I can recall on numerous occasions asking Ministers why people were limited to being in groups of six or why pubs had to close at 10 o’clock. We never got a satisfactory answer to any of those questions, so for the Government to try to put that on us is a little rich.

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Member has just said to the House that he did not have sufficient answers for the rule of six and the 10 pm curfew. Does he not think it curious that Members, except for a handful of us here, still voted for them? Even he went along with it and voted for them.

[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.

Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Esther McVey Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I, too, thank the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) for bringing this debate to the House. Listening to all the powerful speeches really makes me proud of the Chamber. This is the Chamber at its best, with the powerful speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey).

How distressing it must be for the women and families harmed by Primodos that they are still having to fight nearly five decades on. Their road to justice has been long and cruel, and it is shameful that we find it necessary to debate this again. How can it be that the Primodos families are still not being properly supported and compensated after all the evidence that has been presented?

Sadly, Primodos is not an isolated case, and we have seen many examples over the years of our regulatory bodies failing to keep patients safe from new medicines and medical devices. In 2013, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency listed 27 medicines that had been withdrawn on safety grounds. The average time they were on the market was 11 years. I wonder how many times we will allow history to repeat itself. There have been reports and reviews calling for reform, and back in 2004 the Health Committee undertook an inquiry into the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. It noted, of drug companies, the

“closeness that has developed between regulators and companies”,

which had

“deprived the industry of rigorous quality control and audit.”

It also highlighted

“the MHRA’s poor history in recognising drug risks, poor communication and lack of public trust.”

In 2020, Dame June Raine, the chief executive officer of the MHRA, stated that her agency had transformed itself from watchdog to enabler, so I ask: has anything improved in the intervening 20 years since the Health Committee inquiry? I fear not, and I think the time has come for another inquiry of similar scope and depth, only with more robust outcomes. That is what we want—robust outcomes.

In 2020, the independent medicines and medical devices safety review, “First Do No Harm”, found that Primodos, sodium valproate and pelvic mesh had all caused “avoidable harm”. The review showed that patients had been let down, and it called for significant reforms of the MHRA, due to its mishandling of safety concerns. The review was clear that there is “gross under-reporting” of suspected adverse reactions and that

“systems are both too complex and too diffuse to allow early signal detection.”

That theme keeps coming up, and in a recent meeting of the APPG on pandemic response and recovery we heard from Professor Carl Heneghan, who described widespread problems with the reporting of adverse drugs and device reactions, which continue to be a major cause of hospital admissions. As many as 98 out of 100 adverse drug reactions go unreported.

The APPG, of which I am a co-chair, was told that the MHRA is running a system that is too slow to act and is beset by conflicts. Failure to act now will only lead to more harm. We also heard from the solicitor Peter Todd who was acting for 43 individuals who suffered blood clots as a result of the AstraZeneca vaccination. He described how the Government’s vaccine damage payment scheme is operating poorly and failing to help those who have been injured. Not only is the current system unable to protect patients from harm, but it is failing to look after those who have already been harmed.

Three years on from Baroness Cumberlege’s landmark review, the Government have not fully implemented its recommendations. In particular, we are still waiting for redress schemes to be set up to meet the costs of additional care and support for those who were harmed by Primodos, sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. Why has that not been done?

This is a bleak and worrying situation, so I will try to end on a more positive note by commending the important work of the hon. Member for Bolton South East as chair of the APPG on hormone pregnancy tests. My final tribute must go to Marie Lyon, whose tireless campaigning on Primodos over the decades has been inspirational. She deserves the full support and respect of this House, and I hope she and others harmed by this drug can finally get justice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Esther McVey Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

It is a shame that, on International Women’s Day, the shadow Minister cannot welcome the progress we are making on the menopause. Labour could have done this. We are the first Government to reduce the cost of HRT for women. [Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), wants to listen because this is important for women. All licensed HRT products will be available on the prepayment certificate. On the issue of shortages, over 70 products are available to women. Last year, 19 of them were facing a shortage. Thanks to the work of this Government, that is down to five products, and Utrogestan, a product widely used by women, is now back in stock and is being distributed to pharmacies. We are passionate about making HRT more available. There has been a 50% increase in the number of women getting HRT prescriptions. That is a tremendous success for women and we are reducing the cost.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

14. When he plans to reply to the letter of 24 January from the right hon. Member for Tatton on non-covid excess deaths.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

In my letter to my right hon. Friend, I noted that it is likely that a combination of factors has contributed to potential excess deaths, including high flu prevalence, ongoing covid-19, and the disruption to the treatment and detection of conditions such as heart disease. But I know she is very thoughtful about this and follows it closely, and I will endeavour to get her more details.

[Esther McVey]

I am pleased my question has now resulted in a response, for which I am grateful. However, from that response, I was none the wiser as to how the Government have explained the non-covid excess deaths we have seen. So can the Minister give us an insight into the reasons for the non-covid excess deaths since the pandemic?