Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Christopher Chope(1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I shall try to be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. I follow the hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) by referring to a quote from Hayek’s book, “The Road to Serfdom”. I do not claim credit for identifying it myself; it was quoted in the other place by Lord Hannan of Kingsclere on 15 January in the context of the Football Governance Bill. He was talking about the growth of the administrative state, about which the hon. Gentleman was speaking at the beginning of his speech. Hayek said:
“The delegation of particular tasks to separate bodies, while a regular feature, is yet only the first step in the process by which a democracy…relinquishes its powers”.
That is in chapter 5 of “The Road to Serfdom” from 1944, so not much has changed. The MHRA is an example of what happens if we in this House transfer responsibility to unelected and unaccountable organisations.
It so happens that on the Order Paper for tomorrow is my Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill, which is sponsored by a former Attorney General. That Bill calls for an independent review of covid-19 vaccine damage. It calls on the Secretary of State to
“appoint a current or former High Court judge to lead an independent review of disablement caused by Covid-19 vaccinations administered in the United Kingdom and the adequacy of the compensation offered to persons so disabled.”
We know that more than 600 people have already been told by the agency responsible at the Department of Health and Social Care that they have suffered disabilities as a result of covid-19 vaccines. A large number of them, where the disability is in excess of 60%, have been awarded wholly derisory payments of £120,000 each.
My Bill goes on:
“The review must consider…the rates and extent of disablement caused by each type of Covid-19 vaccination offered in the United Kingdom”.
Relevant to this debate, the review must also consider
“the effectiveness of Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency monitoring of such side effects, and National Health Service and Government responses to such monitoring”,
as well as
“the adequacy of compensation offered to persons so disabled”.
There has always been an agreement, basically, that if something goes wrong for people who undertake vaccination voluntarily or are in receipt of other medical products—if they are doing the right thing by the country at large—and they have an adverse reaction, they will be able to look to the Government or the taxpayer to pay them some recompense under the scheme to which I have referred, if causation is established. The trust built by that scheme has been undermined by the long denial of the previous Government—and, to an extent, the current one—that any adverse reactions had been caused by the covid-19 vaccines, other than the most minor disablement. It has also been undermined by the fact that so many people have applied for a review of their cases. Some people—I think more than a thousand—have been waiting more than 18 months for a decision. That shows that this is a low priority for the Government.
I hope that when the Minister responds to the debate, she will be able to explain why the Government will block my Bill again tomorrow. If they were taking this issue seriously, as they should be, they would be open to and supportive of the establishment of an independent review of disablement.
