Covid-19 Inquiry Module 4 Report: Government Response

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Government response to the Covid-19 Inquiry Module 4 Report.

It is refreshing to see the Public Health Minister in this debate. If anybody will be empathetic on this topic it must be the right hon. Lady, as she has campaigned fearlessly on behalf of another group of victims: the victims of contaminated blood scandals. Although I do not want to overdo the comparison between the victims of contaminated blood and victims of vaccine damage, the responses of successive Governments to those tragedies have had a similar pattern: total denial of responsibility to start with, then recognition that people have suffered but not because of anything for which the Government were responsible, and then eventually conceding the cause and effect of the damage but still stalling on providing any effective redress.

It is that stalling on which I wish to concentrate. The Hallett inquiry made clear recommendations in April this year. Recommendation 5 stated:

“The UK government must reform the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme as soon as possible. The reform should include as a minimum: increasing the £120,000 payment, at least in line with inflation to date; subsequently applying annual increases in line with inflation; introducing multiple levels of payment, commensurate with the degree of injury suffered; and any transitional arrangements necessary to provide for fairness between applicants to the existing scheme and applicants to the revised scheme.”

The Government’s response, published earlier this month, is inadequate. That may be because the Minister has been in post for only three months; it may be because Government officials have not done the review work that for the last several years they have assured me and others that they were doing. We will hear from the Minister in due course. I hope she will be able to say that the Government agree to increase the £120,000 payment, that they will apply annual increases in line with inflation, that they will introduce multiple levels of payment, commensurate with the degree of injury, and so on.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member for being stalwart in his campaign on this issue; it has been very well done. For too long a small minority of families who suffered severe adverse outcomes have been left stranded by administrative failures and the lack of fair support. Does the hon. Member agree that the promised reforms must be designed in direct collaboration with the vaccine-injured and their families, to ensure that they are treated with the dignity, speed and fairness that they deserve?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. It is fair to remind everybody that he participated in the first debate I had on this subject, on Friday 10 September 2021. That was the occasion on which I moved the Second Reading of a private Member’s Bill and, in so doing, drew attention to what were then 1,632 yellow card reports of deaths having taken place shortly after vaccination.

I also drew attention then to the public petition that had been put to Parliament, and the Government’s response. The petition called for improved support for those injured or bereaved through covid-19 vaccines. The Government response stated:

“Once more is known about the possible links between the vaccine and potential side effects, it will be considered whether a wider review of the VDPS is needed.”

Well, that was more than five years ago. We have now had that review, had the public inquiry and had the outcome, yet we have not had the Government’s acceptance of the clear recommendations to which I have already referred.

Back in September 2021, I requested that the then Secretary of State establish an independent review of disablement caused by covid-19 vaccines and the adequacy of the compensation awarded. I was not requesting a mammoth public inquiry, but only a short, judge-led inquiry into how we should most fairly compensate those who suffered adverse consequences. I also contrasted the Government’s pessimistic view with the World Health Organisation’s COVAX scheme, which, as the Minister will know, indemnifies claims for vaccine damage in third-world countries. We, the British taxpayers, pay for that, but we do not have an equivalent scheme in our own jurisdiction.

On 2 March 2022, I raised the specific subject of the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 in an Adjournment debate. In that debate, I referred to Kate Scott, whose husband, a fit 44-year-old software engineer, spent 124 days in hospital following a severe brain injury caused by the vaccine. Boris Johnson, the then Prime Minister, had written to Kate Scott and her family back in August 2021, stating:

“You’re not a statistic, and must not be ignored.”

He said that the Government would—I use the word again—consider Kate’s suggestions for reform of the scheme.

In concluding my speech on that occasion, I referred to what David Ennals, Labour’s Secretary of State for Social Services, had said back on 5 February 1979, when introducing the legislation. He said:

“For most people, vaccination is a beneficial procedure, and it is right for the community to give financial aid and support to those who suffer as the result of vaccinations given as part of the public policy programme.”—[Official Report, 5 February 1979; Vol. 962, c. 32.]

That was the rationale for the vaccine damage payment scheme, a scheme introduced by the then Labour Government in their dying days. I will not criticise them for having made that a priority at the end of their term of office.

In responding to my Adjournment debate in March 2022, the then Minister, Maria Caulfield, refused even to accept any causality. She said that there had been 920 claims by then, but:

“The work currently going on is establishing whether there is a causal link between the vaccine and the adverse events that people have been suffering.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2022; Vol. 709, c. 1151.]

Fast forward to today, and we see that we have the findings, to which I have already referred, and then the Government response:

“The government…accepts that there is a need for reform of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, and is committed to reviewing the scheme to ensure it is fit for purpose and delivered effectively.”

That implied that it was a review that would start after the inquiry had reported; however, when I and other people campaigning on behalf of the victims met the then Public Health Minister, the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), probably about a year ago, she told us that the Government were already reviewing the scheme. We asked her in what respect they were reviewing the scheme, but she said she could not say, although she conceded that they were reviewing it. It now seems as though the Government are starting afresh, saying they are

“committed to reviewing the scheme…we will work closely with the vaccine injured and their families as we consider how the scheme could be strengthened in the future.”

That is a long way from the specific, clear and strong recommendations made by Baroness Hallett. Let us think about what the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said to Kate Scott in in August 2021: he said he would review it. Has the review not already taken place? I assume it must have.

There is another issue here. We now know that, as of 30 June, 264 claims had been successful and 582 claims under the scheme had been rejected where causation had been established but the claimant did not meet the 60% disability threshold. On my calculation, that means that about £32 million has been paid out in compensation, yet in answer to a question I asked, which was answered on 3 September, I found out that over four years the costs of the staffing, the non-staffing, the medical assessment and payments to health care bodies is no less than £82 million. All that public money was spent on bureaucracy to try to block people who have suffered damage—in some cases, bereavement—as a result of doing the right thing and taking the vaccines. That is just unacceptable.

I hope that the Minister will include within her response an explanation of what the Government are going to do to simplify the scheme, stop blocking legitimate claims through technical measures, and ensure that instead of spending another £82 million over the next four years on bureaucracy, we actually use some of that money to compensate the people who have suffered as a result of the vaccine programme.

I can help the Minister because I anticipated this debate, in a sense, when we had the private Members’ Bill ballot. I put in a number of presentation Bills, one of which is the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (UK Covid-19 Inquiry) Bill. That is set for Second Reading on 15 January 2027, so it is ideally timed to be able to incorporate any recommendations that the Minister comes forward with in this debate. The long title of the Bill is:

“A Bill to require the Secretary of State to publish proposals for the implementation of Recommendation 5 of Module 4 of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, relating to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme; and for connected purposes.”

The Bill represents a legislative opportunity for the Government, and I hope that they will take advantage of it.

In the meantime, during this Session, the Government have been blocking my Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments Bill. It has already been published, and the explanatory notes to the Bill set out a number of suggested reforms, including looking at the benefits of having a system that does not cost the Government anything but would ensure that people got recompense. That would be done by introducing a scheme similar to that which covers motor insurance, for example—the Motor Insurers’ Bureau scheme or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme—where the industry pays for the costs of the compensation arising from problems with the way in which those schemes have operated. What could be more equitable than that?

Instead of doing that, both the previous Government and the current Government are indemnifying big pharma against any costs associated with vaccines that do not work properly, which is intolerable. My Bill has a number of recommendations and suggestions. I hope that the Minister will be able to engage with me on them, if not in this debate then privately afterwards.