Covid-19: Response and Excess Deaths

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

Apologies for my croaky voice. I will try to respond to all the points that I can.

I thank the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) for securing this important debate. As the Opposition have rightly said, it is important that we have the debate in a measured way, because there are strong feelings on all sides. Those who have concerns about vaccines, lockdowns and the way pandemics are managed are right to raise them, but it is also right and proper that people express the view that vaccines protect people and that difficult decisions had to be made. As the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) highlighted, it is much easier to come to different conclusions with hindsight. It is really important that as we go forward, still living with covid, we continue our discussions in a measured debate on all sides. In recent weeks, we have seen the impact of people not being able to speak freely about their concerns regarding the Post Office or the Tavistock centre.

As I said, we have had a number of debates on this issue, including in January, when I acknowledged that the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire was correct to say that we have seen excess deaths in recent years. However, excess deaths are not new; they were happening before covid and have happened since then as well. It is important to look at the figures, because the Office for National Statistics indicates that the number of excess deaths has been reducing, year on year, since the high in 2020, when there were 66,740 excess deaths in England. I can only talk about England because health is obviously devolved and the Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will have their own data. In 2022, that number went down to 37,701, and in 2023, there were just 10,206 excess deaths in England. It is important to remember that every single one of those is a person, a family member, and a loved one, but it may reassure hon. Members greatly, as it does me, that the ONS has reported negative excess deaths for every week so far in 2024.

[Andrew Bridgen]

After a pandemic, which we have been out of for quite some years, we would expect a deficit in deaths, so why have we not had a deficit for the past two years, in which we have not had the covid pandemic?

[Maria Caulfield]

The hon. Gentleman may have missed my last sentence before his intervention. I said that the ONS data shows that in every week in 2024 so far, we have had negative excess deaths. That goes specifically to his point.

We are not complacent, though. As I set out in previous debates, when we have seen those rises in excess deaths—and we have seen significant excess deaths—we have looked at that data to see the cause behind it, whether it is the vaccine, covid, or other factors. We have been working so hard, and I am really pleased that we are now starting to see negative excess deaths.

Let me highlight some of the work that we have been doing in looking at those figures. We had an incident of high flu prevalence in 2022, with a peak of 31.8% of flu tests being positive. That is highly likely to be because we locked down the country for two years and people’s immune systems were not used to flu. That is why, last winter, we brought forward our flu vaccine, and extended it the year before to the over 65s; we recognised that people’s immunity to flu and respiratory illnesses was low because we had locked them down. I think that we need to be honest about that. This winter, as a result, we have seen fewer admissions and fewer deaths from flu and respiratory illnesses.

We have also seen challenges with other health conditions, such as diabetes and cardiac disease, for which people would routinely have come forward for checks. Routine treatments and access to appointments are difficult even now, given the backlog of examinations and tests that need to happen. When we looked at this, we saw that last year, the rate of deaths from cardiovascular disease was 2% higher than expected, with there having been more than 2,200 excess deaths.

That is why we are reinvesting in our NHS health check. It was on pause during covid, when people could not get their blood pressure or cholesterol checked and could not go on smoking prevention programmes. We restarted those, and as a result, excess deaths from cardiac disease are starting to fall. We want to use the opportunity to roll out our new digital health checks. We recognise that access to GPs is sometimes difficult, but this roll-out is expected to deliver an additional 1 million checks in the first four years. We also have a £10 million pilot to deliver cardiovascular checks in the workplace. Again, that is about making it as easy as possible for people to get checked. We have our Pharmacy First roll-out as well. That is all for general health purposes. We know that all these things contributed to excess death rates.

I want to touch on the crux of the matter, which is the covid vaccine; that has come through in all these debates. I was not a Health Minister at the time, so I did not have to make these difficult decisions, but the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton is absolutely right: as the pandemic preparedness Minister, I want the findings of the inquiry. I have to make difficult decisions now about potential future pandemics that may never happen, but could happen tomorrow—we just do not know. The results of the inquiry with regard to lockdowns, face masks and vaccines will all be really useful information, and at the moment, I am not much the wiser on those results.

On module 4, I want to see any evidence about vaccine safety, because that is how we learn. I think we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. We want to do the best, but during the pandemic, when we watched TV footage from around the world, and the media were often pushing us to lock down harder, faster and longer, we had to make difficult decisions without the benefit of hindsight.

I went back to the wards during covid, and I looked after covid patients who were being treated for cancer. We lost many of them, and we lost a number of staff, too. I have seen this from both sides of the fence.

[Dr Mullan]

Of all the concerning points that the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) made in his opening speech, particularly abhorrent was the suggestion that people who were not eligible for a ventilator were essentially condemned to death. That is a deeply disturbing thing to say, and it does not reflect my experience. I was privileged to volunteer on the frontline, as the Minister did, and I saw staff battling as best they could to save people, using all the medical treatments available, whatever the patient’s age. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to those staff who worked so hard to save as many lives as they could?

[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.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the Minister give way?

[Maria Caulfield]

I will give way one more time, as I have only a few minutes left.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the Minister for giving way. She is very generous.

Using her medical experience, can the Minister explain to the House—I am befuddled by this—how a systemic vaccine injected into the arm, into the blood and creating an antibody response, can stop an infection of the airways and lungs by a respiratory virus? It has never happened, and it did not happen this time either, did it? How can it do that?

[Maria Caulfield]

That is actually what antibodies do.

I will answer some of the many questions that have been asked in this debate. I reiterate that no medicine or vaccine is completely risk free. Even simple paracetamol has the potential to kill people if it is not taken properly, and people with certain conditions might not be able to take it at all. We have monitoring systems in place. The MHRA, which I know has come under criticism, took a stand when in April 2021, following concerns raised through the yellow card system, it reduced access for the under-30s and then for the under-40s. When concerns are raised, it absolutely takes action. There are now recommendations about the type of vaccine, and about whom we vaccinate, bearing in mind the current evidence.

I have said that no vaccine is 100% safe, which is why we have the vaccine damage payment scheme. I hear concerns about that, and I have met my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) to discuss it. We took the scheme off the Department for Work and Pensions and moved it into the Department of Health and Social Care to speed it up and get claims turned around more quickly. We have had more than 4,000 claims, 170 of which have been awarded. Roughly speaking, the majority of claims are decided on within six months, and the vast majority are decided on within 12 months. Of course, we want to speed up on those. We recognise the time limit of three years, which is why we are working as hard as we can to get through as many claims as possible, so that if people have been affected by the covid vaccine, they get some help and support through that funding.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) raised the issue of research. We are absolutely researching the issue of covid-19 vaccines—not just future types of vaccines, but their safety. There is £110 million from the National Institute for Health and Care Research going specifically into covid-19 vaccine safety, and I encourage all Members to keep an eye on that as the evidence comes forward.

I have to give the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire a few minutes to reply, so I will just say that we take this issue extremely seriously. I know that as a Minister, I will be responsible—

[Danny Kruger]

Will the Minister give way?

[Maria Caulfield]

I will not, as I have to let the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire respond. We take this issue very seriously. I have been as open and transparent as I can be. If there are concerns, we will always look into them, but there is no doubt that covid vaccines save lives. There is no doubt that some people have experienced harm from them—we acknowledge that, and we want to help and support people who have been affected—but the vaccines did get us out of the pandemic and we need to be mindful of that as well.

[Andrew Bridgen]

With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, let me thank all the hon. Members who have taken part in a debate that has been robust, as it should be, given the gravity of the issue. I wish this debate were not needed; I wish the experimental covid-19 vaccines were safe and effective, but they are not. The longer we go on not admitting the problem, the bigger the problem that will come, and the greater the harm that will continue to be caused. Those in this House can continue to deny that the vaccines are causing harm and deaths, and the legacy media can continue to censor all reports of vaccine harms and excess deaths, but the people know, in increasing numbers, because they are the ones who are losing their loved ones and relatives. I urge the Government: release the control-level data, and let us sort this out once and for all.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the covid-19 pandemic response and trends in excess deaths; and calls on the Covid-19 Inquiry to move onto its module four investigation into vaccines and therapeutics as soon as possible.