Excess Death Trends

Debate between Gary Streeter and George Howarth

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I am afraid that the evidence the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) is basing his arguments on is highly controversial and strongly contested as to its reliability. I will shortly explain what I mean by that assertion.

I attended two meetings on the issue that the hon. Gentleman chaired, the latter of which, late last year, included a panel of “experts” who made presentations. I attended both meetings on the basis that I am aware that there are cases in which some people with underlying or pre-existing medical conditions were vaccinated inappropriately, in some cases with lethal consequences. I support the case for some form of restitution for them and their surviving families.

At the second meeting, I was alarmed that some of the evidence given was polemical rather than scientific. The nature of some of the expert presentations alarmed me—specifically, the misleading and inaccurate assertions, similar to those made, for example, by Andrew Wakefield on the measles, mumps and rubella scandal, which tried to make the link between vaccination and autism. That was thoroughly discredited subsequently, but the consequence of that, which is still being felt, is that children are not being vaccinated and there is now an upturn in the incidence of measles, in some cases with serious consequences.

The meeting I attended involved a number of “experts” who gave presentations that included data that I am frankly sceptical about. At that meeting, I undertook to raise my concerns about the accuracy of the data with the Office of National Statistics, and I have done so. In his response, Professor Sir Ian Diamond, the national statistician, said that he has undertaken to

“consider and investigate any possible misrepresentation of the data.”

I am grateful to Sir Ian for that undertaking.

In a report in The Times today, reference is made to a study published in The Lancet that said:

“Missed vaccines ‘caused 7,000 Covid hospitalisations and deaths’”—

that is missed covid vaccines.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Ten seconds please.

[Sir George Howarth]

I am drawing to a close. By the way, that evidence involved 67 million people. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire quoted some research based on unreliable data, but that is a major undertaking published in The Lancet, and it makes completely the opposite point to his.