Health Bill (Seventeenth sitting)

Sojan Joseph Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th July 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Morgan]

I absolutely agree. My mother and grandmother both had polio, which nobody would expect to experience in this day and age. That same grandmother’s sister died of diphtheria, and her father had smallpox. That was all just over 100 years ago, so it was not too long ago that people were experiencing what we now consider to be antiquated and unthinkable diseases.

The vaccination programmes that have been brought in over the past century have undoubtedly been game-changing for public health, not least for people growing up with working-class backgrounds, as my family would have been. That is why it is so important to deal with the disinformation that allows unscientific and dangerous anti-vax views to be communicated convincingly to the wider community.

[Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)]

I agree with the hon. Member that people with power, especially those with political platforms, have used it to spread misinformation about vaccination. Some medical professionals working in our hospitals and the NHS—doctors and nurses—are also against vaccines. Can the hon. Member explain how we can tackle that issue?

[Helen Morgan]

It is really important not to blame people who have seen convincing information online or have been given convincing information by people who ought to know better—including at political party conferences. We need to battle the source of that information and ensure that accurate, factual information is available and communicated to everyone in an accessible way by people they trust. That is key to all this. As I have said before, ostracising or ridiculing people who have been given information in a very convincing way is not the way to resolve this problem. We need to tackle it in an understanding way by communicating the facts sympathetically and accessibly.

It is important to note that concerns about vaccinations are not exclusive to a single group of voters. There is significant vaccine hesitancy across some ethnic minority communities and in hard-to-reach places across the country. We must do more to support doctors, nurses and the NHS to fight fiction with facts, or the long-term health of the country will suffer. That is what new clause 77 seeks to do. There is some great local work being done, but there needs to be a joined-up strategy to combat all aspects of disinformation, because a nice social media video telling people to get their jab will not beat it.

Now that Reform UK has a greater presence in our local government, NHS leaders will have to handle more and more difficult conversations with anti-vax and conspiracy theorist councillors, and they deserve support to engage with those people effectively and constructively. The proposed strategy would provide just that. It would have to consider

“support for medical professionals to build trust and engage with persons who are anti-vaccine…investment in public messaging to combat medical disinformation, including engagement with trusted online influencers…outreach campaigns focused on communities that are sceptical about vaccinations…introducing criminal liability for those, including online influencers and politicians, who profit from medical disinformation, and…a new verification requirement for any social media account claiming to be a medical professional.”

We must do more systematically to protect the NHS and our nation’s health from the growing threats of medical misinformation. We urge the Government to give this issue the focus it needs, and we hope that they consider this new clause one way to do that.