Donald Trump

Debate between Roger Gale and Paul Flynn

Monday 18th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. A significant number of Members wish to contribute to the debate. I must ask at this stage that any interventions be very brief.

[Paul Flynn]

I think it is premature—we have had an intervention on this before—but if that was to happen, it would of course be an outrage. It would certainly be contrary to all American history—the words written on the Statue of Liberty—and a denial of the best in America’s history and its hospitality to those who wish to live in her country.

I would urge the alternative of inviting Mr Trump here. I would be delighted if he could show us where the so-called no-go areas for police are in this country—I have never been able to find one. It would be a pleasure to take him down to Brixton and show him the rich mixture of races and creeds that are living happily together there. Perhaps it would be interesting to have a chat about why in America there are more people killed by shotguns every day than are killed every year in this country. The Leader of the Opposition has suggested a trip to Islington around the mosques and possibly a meeting with his wife, who I understand is from Mexico. I am sure they would have a very interesting conversation. I believe we should greet the extreme things that Mr Trump says with our own reasonableness and hospitality. We should greet him with courtesy if he comes here, but we should not build him up by our attacks.

In conclusion, another great Republican said in 1990:

“Democrats and Republicans...I salute you. And on your behalf, as well as the behalf of this entire country, I now lift my pen to sign this Americans with Disabilities Act and say: Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”

Those are the words of President Bush. It was absolutely right that that Act, for those who are disabled, led to similar Acts in nations throughout the world. We should look to what we are seeing from Donald Trump at the moment and confront his words of prejudice, his lack of knowledge and intolerance. We should greet him with a welcoming hand of friendship, knowledge and truth, and then perhaps more shameful walls of prejudice will come tumbling down.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Council of Europe

Debate between Roger Gale and Paul Flynn

Monday 16th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Roger Gale]

I might do that at the end of my speech, but give me five minutes!

I should also say, just in case anybody thinks otherwise, that, as far as I can see, I will have no gain and a lot of grief if I take the job. If I am asked to do something, I have a tendency to say that I will do it to the best of my ability, and that is what I will do. I have some experience, including nearly 20 years as a member of the Panel of Chairs and a couple of days in the big Chair. With the help of friends, I am sure we can create a satisfactory delegation, if we are allowed to do so.

I do not want to dwell on the background to this debate. My personal view, for what it is worth, is that neither side, if I can put it that way, has covered itself in glory. I certainly think that the Whips Office made a pig’s ear of it, and I think my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who is a genuine friend of mine, ignored Denis Healey’s first rule of holesmanship, which is that if you are in one, stop digging. That made it harder for those of us who were trying to broker an agreement between an immovable object and an irresistible force. However, we are where we are.

It is in sorrow rather than in anger that I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who moved the motion, that if it goes through as it stands, it will be a complete dog’s breakfast that will leave our relationship with the Council of Europe in the mire. It quite clearly was not thought through by my right hon. Friend or those who signed it. When I telephoned the chairman of the 1922 Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), on Thursday and asked him, “Do you actually know what this is going to do?”, he was very candid and said, “No.” We had a constructive conversation, the product of which—I am deeply grateful to him for it—is amendment (b). I hope, at the very least, that the House will accept it, even though it would not do what I want to do.

Let me go back to the effect the motion will have if it is carried as it stands. The list approved by Mr Speaker has to be in Strasbourg by no later than this Friday, 20 November. That does not mean downstream or by the end of the month—it means by the end of this week. If it is not in by then, we will not have a delegation—at least not until January, but I will come to that in a moment. There is, therefore, a sense of urgency.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire was right to say that there was a delay, but to be fair to the Government—although I have no reason to be fair to them—we waited, understandably and reasonably, for the Labour party to have its leadership election and for it to apportion high office positions so that others could then be elected to the Council of Europe. That led to a huge delay and in my view there has been an inordinate delay since then, too.

If we do not submit our nomination in time for the Bureau, which will be held in Sofia on 26 November, and the Presidential Committee, which will approve committees on 27 November, none of the work that should take place during December and January will be able to take place. That includes work in Paris, and we really need to be in Paris after what happened over the weekend. Those of us who have served on the Council of Europe have good friends there, and we want to see them and reassure them. We want them to know that we are not running away and that we will be there alongside them and supporting them.

The committee on culture, science, education and media, which is vital, will meet on 3 and 4 December. It is a pity that the Press Gallery is empty, because those who have criticised the Council of Europe need to recognise that we, including the sub-committee that I chair, do a huge amount of work in defence of the freedom of the rights of journalists internationally. We fight for those in prison.

On 7 December, the political affairs committee will meet in Brussels, and that is important. On 8 December, the legal affairs committee will meet in Paris. The monitoring committee, which is one of the key committees of the Council of Europe, will meet in Paris on 9 December. On 10 December, the procedure committee will meet in Paris. On 13 and 14 December—Members should bear it in mind that if the motion goes through, we will have no delegation—the Presidential Committee and the Bureau will meet here in London. The meeting will take place in this building—we are hosting it. We are going to look pretty stupid as a nation if we do not have a delegation to host it. Mr Speaker is probably aware of this by now, but he will host a reception in Speaker’s House at the end of that meeting. On 15 December, the migration committee will meet in Paris. That is important, particularly given what is happening at the moment. On 14 January, which is before the plenary part-session, the committee on the election of judges to the European Court of Human Rights will meet, and that is very important indeed.

I say as gently as possible to my right hon. Friend that a raft of work needs to be done between now and the next plenary session. I have already been prevented from completing a report for the monitoring committee on the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because we had no delegation and therefore no members, so I could not go. Other colleagues have found themselves in the same boat.

I am not opposing the principle of election; it applies to Select Committees and that is fine by me. However, if we are going to do that—this is why I tabled my amendment, which has not been selected—I want to give the process a little time so that we can do the job properly. I served on the Procedure Committee and we considered how members of every single Select Committee and the Deputy Speakers and Speaker should be elected.

[Paul Flynn]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Roger Gale]

Let me just finish this point. We made recommendations, only one of which—I will not say which one—was rejected. All the rest went through. The issue under discussion was never raised at that time and we have to ask ourselves why not. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the NATO committee were not mentioned either. They are not on the agenda of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire, in spite of the fact that one very senior member of the NATO committee has also been removed from his position. That may have escaped my right hon. Friend’s notice, but it is true.

If we are to do this properly—and we should—I would have preferred the issue first to be referred to the Procedure Committee so that it could give a proper recommendation on the Council of Europe, the OSCE and NATO. That could then have been approved by the House in time for the election of a full delegation for the next session in 2017.

I am told there is fear that the Government would block that process. I do not believe that to be the case and I hope my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House will be able to give a clear assurance—she might not—that, were we to go down the route of the Procedure Committee and do the job properly, the Government would not stand in the way of its findings. If we did that, I think we would do a better job.

I can and will work with whatever is foisted upon me this afternoon. If it is the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West, we will work with that as best we can. However, if it is the original motion, I fear it will fail the House.

Health (CSR)

Debate between Roger Gale and Paul Flynn

Thursday 11th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a very interesting debate to be had on those issues, but the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has been in the House a long time, and the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who has just intervened, has been Secretary of State for Health and both are aware that, while the subject may be interesting, it is not to do with the comprehensive spending review, which is the title of the debate.

[Paul Flynn]

I want to address my remarks to the budget of the health service, and how it matches our priorities.

Perhaps I may move to a different subject. I should like to pursue what my right hon. Friend said. He is absolutely right that the lobbyists determine health policy in America, and will have an increasing effect on the comprehensive review, and on the demands on and priorities of the health service. However, I shall deal with another matter, which is not political in any way, because it involves decisions made by one Government, which were then approved by the pantomime horse of a Government we have now. It is about pandemics past and future. We have had a series of those, which have been costly for the health service. They go back to severe acute respiratory syndrome—a very severe and nasty illness, which killed more than half the people who caught it—through the threatened avian flu, which never lived up to its billing, to swine flu last year.

Swine flu in Britain cost the health service £1.2 billion on antivirals and vaccines. It also had other damaging effects, in that it scared the country greatly. People were frightened by the possibility of flu on the scale of the 1918 flu that killed between 25 million and 40 million people. It distorted all the priorities of the health service for a year. The health service gave attention to that rather than to the other things that it should have given attention to. It also involved the use of a vaccine that had not been trialled. The people who say it was not fully trialled are those who made it—GlaxoSmithKline and the other producers. That was a major event, and we might consider, knowing what we know now, how we got into that situation.

We were told by Liam Donaldson that it was likely that there would be between 3,000 and 750,000 deaths. He gave an average figure. We in the United Kingdom could expect 65,000 deaths, many of which would be among children. Rightly, that terrified the country and the media took it up. What was the source or basis for those figures, and the result? The result was that the number of people who died with swine flu was about 450. The number of people who died of swine flu was about 150. That compares with the 2,000 to 12,000 people—in one year it was 20,000—who die every year of seasonal flu. The swine flu outbreak was thus by any standards a minor event in Britain. Worldwide we were told to expect between 4 million and 7.5 million deaths. The total recorded was 18,000—a minute fraction of what had been expected.

In the context of the spending review, how do we prepare for another pandemic? What if we are given word by the World Health Organisation to prepare for another pandemic? Why did the WHO act as it did? It was for one reason—the definition of a pandemic changed between May and June last year. Scale 6 is the top pandemic; there is no six and a half, and no scale 7. The WHO told the press that there was a scale 6 pandemic; the press immediately went into hysteria mode and said that it was the same as the flu of 1918, and told us to prepare for tens of thousands of deaths. Until May 2009, the definition of a scale 6 pandemic was one that involved a tremendous number of deaths or serious illnesses. In June 2009 the definition was changed to take out that measure of severity and the point was made that it could involve mild flu. A pandemic would be a scale 6 pandemic depending on the geographical area in which the flu was detected. The alarming message came from Madame Chan, who was very much involved in the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, and who expected something like SARS again. The world was expecting a flu epidemic, because we had one in 1957; there was a world flu epidemic in 1968, and another one in 1977. There was an expectation of a major flu epidemic, but we know the results now.

I want now to consider Tamiflu.

[Mr Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. I am very sorry, but I must ask the hon. Gentleman to make at least a thinly veiled attempt to relate his remarks to the comprehensive spending review. We are not having a general debate about the health service.

[Paul Flynn]

As to the likely spending this year, if there is another threatened pandemic, how are we to fit it into the spending review, and future spending, since we are at present tied? Do we draw the lessons of what happened last year? If another epidemic comes along, will we react in the same panic-stricken way, or act as another country did? Perhaps we should consider the present spending review in the Polish Parliament. Ewa Kopacz, who has responsibility for health, was interviewed by GlaxoSmithKline, who told her, “We are not going to guarantee this vaccine, because we haven’t trialled it properly, and if there are any adverse reactions you, the Polish Government, will be responsible.” Ewa Kopacz said, “Well, if you don’t trust it, I don’t trust it.”

The Polish Government spent about 7 zlotys on the vaccine, compared with our £1.2 billion. The result was that they had half the number of deaths per million of population that we had. I want to point out that huge financial decisions were made in the swine flu pandemic, and we should have drawn the lesson from them, but we have not. We had a review, by one Department, which was a whitewash and was approved by the Government, and which said that the reaction was proportional. It was not proportional if we compare UK spending with the spending in Poland—which was virtually nothing—given the result that they had.

Tamiflu was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in America on the basis of its being a mass placebo medicine. In December 2009 the BMJ published an article alluding, in a reference along the lines of “Somebody stole my Tamiflu research paper” to the traditional excuse that students give for not doing homework. The authors had tried to find the research that said Tamiflu was some good, but it was not there. The BMJ could not find it. The FDA in America approved Tamiflu not because it found it was useful but because it had gone into the research and found that the drug was no better than a couple of aspirins. It had no perceived proved value; but the FDA approved it because it wanted to be able to prescribe something in the event of an epidemic. They wanted to show a man in a white coat, giving a pill. It would have an advantage as a placebo—but there is no advantage.

In spite of that, in this year’s spending review we shall almost certainly spend more money on Tamiflu and the vaccines that have not been properly trialled. I am not against vaccines, which are a huge and miraculous improvement in world health, and have saved thousands of millions of lives, but there are serious doubts about the fact that we spent our money last year, and might spend more next year, on a vaccine the side-effects of which are now becoming apparent in various countries—Japan, Finland and India.

I sense that you are going to call me to order, again, Mr Gale. My point is essentially how we order our finances in the spending review. With the changes in NICE, there will certainly be another increase in drug prices. The drug bill constantly increases, in real terms and as a proportion of the health budget. That has been going on for the past 20 years. It will happen again if we hand over power to the lobbyists and big pharmaceutical companies. We are seeing it now. It has been said that instead of a postcode lottery, we have a one-way escalator to higher prices. If we surrender further to hysteria about another world pandemic or to pressure from lobbyists to buy certain drugs to the detriment of other health services, the spending review will be inadequate. The Department will spend more money on drugs—some required, some totally unnecessary—and further impoverish the NHS, creating a decline in important life-saving services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Flynn]

On a point of order, Mr Gale. There is a tradition in this place that Ministers making the winding-up speech reply to the debate. This Minister has been speaking for 14 minutes and has not mentioned a single point made in the debate.

[Mr Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentleman has been in the House long enough to know that the Minister is responsible for his own speech and his own remarks.