International Health Regulations 2005

Debate between Maria Miller and Danny Kruger

Monday 18th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I am very pleased to be able to speak in this debate. I thank all the petitioners and members of the public who are interested in the debate, and the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) who introduced it. It is worrying that so few Members are present. I am always proud to act in concert with my band of brothers here—we happy few who seem to fight on multiple fronts. This is a fringe issue in Parliament, as demonstrated by the empty Benches, but significant numbers of the public have a real interest in this topic, so what is going on?

I think the explanations are partly that it is a complex matter. It requires significant delving into pretty abstruse documentation and websites. As the debate goes on, it is not always thrilling. It is also that we debate issues of principle, such as the abstractions of sovereignty and individual rights, that often fail to get traction in the media. Although occasionally generating headlines, they do not generate proper attention in Parliament or the media.

The fundamental reason why the topic and the proposed regulations and treaty from the World Health Organisation have not generated the sort of disquiet that we few Members feel among our colleagues, the wider public and the media is that we want, as individuals and citizens, to trust in the Government when it comes to healthcare. We really do. That is why we have such a commitment to the NHS in our country. We want the state to be trusted, authoritative and capable when it comes to our health. We instinctively recoil at suggestions that there is a problem when it comes to the management of healthcare, and yet, as we have heard today from colleagues who put the details very well—I will not reiterate the points that have been made—there is clearly a difficulty, a challenge, a problem with the proposed regulations and treaty.

It is suggested by the World Health Organisation and the Governments who are contributing to the design of the regulations and the treaty that the WHO should move from being responsible for identifying pandemics on behalf of countries, and towards taking responsibility for co-ordinating the response to pandemics. That is an enormously significant change. It would co-ordinate the response of nation states and how they managed their health care. We have heard expressed very well the threat that that represents; it could mean enforced mandates, forced lockdowns and so on. I echo the call on the Minister to address the question whether the World Health Organisation will be able to impose a lockdown, or any other intervention, without the consent of Parliament.

I would also like the Minister to reflect on the provision in the proposed regulations that suggests that the World Health Organisation would require countries to tackle misinformation and disinformation. We must remember that in January 2020, the organisation aspiring to this power denied that there was human-to-human transmission of covid-19. For many months, it denied the possibility that the virus had a human origin and originated in a Wuhan facility. This is the organisation that we propose giving the power to intervene in national debates, and to close down discussion about the origins and appropriate response to pandemics under the guise of tackling misinformation and disinformation.

We should be concerned about the value of the World Health Organisation, given its record, and we should, I am afraid, have the same scepticism about our Government’s role. The trust that we all desperately want to have in healthcare has been badly tested by the experience of recent years. I echo many of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) about radicalisation; we both experienced that radicalisation over the course of the covid experience. We went from a position of trust in the state to profound scepticism.

I want to call attention to a new book that has come out, to which I contributed the afterword.

[Dame Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not think that we do advertising in here.

[Danny Kruger]

Okay. Forgive me. I will not advertise the book, although I derive no benefit from it, I should emphasise. It is written by the campaigners UsforThem, who did such good work in calling attention to the effect of the lockdowns on children, and who became radicalised through the experience of covid. UsforThem has written a very good book about the lack of accountability for the response to covid. I do not share some of its concerns about particular decisions made by particular officials or Ministers, but I absolutely share its concerns about the failure of accountability in the system as a whole.

The inquiry into the whole covid episode, which we are all watching, is performing a fairly useful function in identifying misdemeanours, confusions, and, in a rather whodunnit way, which Ministers, officials and advisers deserve individual blame. What we are really getting out of it, however, is evidence that the system as a whole failed. There is no point in identifying the culpability of individuals when the fundamental problem that the inquiry, and the experience of us all, demonstrates is that the British state failed.

On the regulations, as I said in April, during the last debate we had on this subject in this place, the problem during the whole covid episode was not the lack of international co-operation; there was a very high, remarkable, degree of that. Almost every country did exactly the same thing, following China’s example. What we did not have enough of was independent decision making at nation state level. The bits that worked at nation state level were times when individuals and communities on the ground, local government, local public services and local businesses took the initiative to collaborate and develop their own responses, and took responsibility for supporting communities. That is what we needed at the national level, too—more independent decision making, while obviously collaborating and sharing information about what works.

I recognise the point made by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I hope that the Minister will say that the Government are committed to ensuring that British national sovereignty is reflected in the wording of any new treaty. I am afraid—we are familiar with this from current debates—that peppering legislation with the language of sovereignty is not sufficient. What we really need is the practice of sovereignty and the declaration of principles. Principles are only valid in so far as they are put into practice. We want actual practice of the principle of sovereignty through the treaty that emerges, and in any amendments to the regulations.

I conclude with four questions for the Minister, who I hope will be able to answer them. First, when will we see the next iteration of the draft regulations? I had understood that they were expected now. Secondly, which Minister is responsible for negotiating the treaty and the regulations? Is it him or a colleague? I would also be interested to know which civil servants are involved. We knew who the civil servants negotiating Brexit were. I wonder who has been delegated to the WHO and is working on our behalf there.

Thirdly, colleagues raised the issue of the WHO mandates potentially imposing a very significant bill on the taxpayer. Has work been done to quantify the potential cost to the taxpayer of implementing the requirements of the treaty? Finally, I appreciate that the Minister is probably not in a position to do so today, but will the Government commit to publishing their red lines—what they will and will not accept? Vague commitments to preserving sovereignty are not sufficient. What exactly will be acceptable and not? I appreciate that the negotiations are going on with other states, but I think it would be appropriate for our Government, at this advanced stage of the negotiations, to declare publicly what they are and are not prepared to cede, by way of our independence.