Covid-19: Response and Excess Deaths

Stephen Metcalfe Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I will not be able to adjudicate on whether my hon. Friend or the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) is right, but I look forward to my hon. Friend’s being able to make his own speech and to its being subjected to scrutiny by the hon. Gentleman. That is a spectacle to which I think we are all looking forward.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying, and I am sure we all feel very sorry for the young woman in the case that he has described, but is there not the potential that when a vaccine is given in such great quantities to such a large cohort of the population, there is more likely to be correlation than causation between the effects? There is no doubt that people were ill before covid and before the vaccination was delivered, but my problem is that I do not know the answer to that question. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) says he does, but I am not sure how he can. What I will say is this: should not all of us be calling for further research on this issue to find out what the fundamental truth of it is, rather than listening to those who make assertions that have not been approved by scientists?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Part of the answer to my hon. Friend’s question is to be found in the adjudications of the independent medical advisers who have been looking at claims made under the vaccine damage payment scheme. They have concluded that in several hundred cases there is no doubt that the adverse consequences that are the subject of complaint were caused by the vaccines, and that has given rise to the compensation. In a large number of other cases, the medics have concluded that the conditions suffered and complained about were caused by the vaccines, but have not caused sufficient disability—beyond the 60% threshold—to trigger payments.

Given the evidence provided by the doctors who are acting independently on behalf of the vaccine damage compensation scheme, there is now no doubt that, for some people, the vaccines are fatal or cause severe damage or injury. That is not in dispute, and the more people understand that, the more they will realise that it was over the top for the Government and Ministers to pretend at the beginning of the vaccination programme that these vaccines were going to be different from almost all other known medical interventions and vaccines—in other words, they were not absolutely safe and effective. The failure to say that has severely undermined trust in the system, which is why we need a lot more debates like this.

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[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who has done remarkably good work on vaccine-damaged people. I co-chair his all-party parliamentary group’s sister group, the APPG on pandemic response and recovery, which has allowed me to see that we have a whole body of expert opinion before us. Medics, lawyers, experts in childcare and a whole range of politicians have come to very different views on what the right response to covid was and, in some cases, on both the law and the science itself.

Before I go any further, let me say that my experience of the APPG, and of climate change or global warming debates, is that science and politics make very uneasy bedfellows. There is often an attempt in a political debate to resolve matters that are only resolvable by looking at the evidence, doing more experiments and finding out the truth of the matter, which is not always possible in a debate where people feel very strongly about things.

I want to talk about something we have not really talked about so far: the disease itself. People have different views about the damage done by covid. Some people think it is harmless and just another flu, whereas some treat it as though it were the plague. It is neither. It was a nasty disease for some people who got it, but its major characteristic was the profile of people who were killed or made ill by it. It affected older people much more severely. I think the median age of those who died was 82 for men and 84 for women, so it was a disease of the elderly. Those below 50 were relatively safe—some died, but not many. That was known at the beginning of the epidemic.

This comes back to the point about politics, and the protection of Government politicians, being more important than looking at the science. A rational response to a disease with the profile of covid-19 would have been to put a cordon sanitaire around those people who were vulnerable because of their age or because they had other diseases, such as lung diseases, and to let the rest of us go about our business and take the risk, as we do every year with seasonal flu, but the Government did the opposite. They locked everybody up and sent untested people back from hospital into care homes, where they infected other people, which led to a spike in deaths.

At the same time, the Government were telling us that they were following the science. I have a scientific background—it is not in biology, but I have a degree in chemistry—and I believe in following the science and finding out exactly what is going on. The science was not followed, and not only because the response did not follow the natural profile of the disease. In their early statements, people from the NHS, and both Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, said that masks were a complete waste of time and that lockdowns were ineffective because there would be a peak six months later that would probably be worse than if we had not locked down. That advice changed very quickly, I believe under political pressure. Again, I think that was a mistake.

One country that did follow the science, Sweden, made mistakes—it made the same mistake that we made by sending infected people back into care homes—but it did not lock down and it did not restrict people’s freedom, or it did so in only a moderate way. It came out as about the best of comparable countries in Europe in terms of deaths.

Another consequence, which we see in every debate in this House, is that there is no money left. We spent £400 billion on covid, a lot of it wasted. We can read National Audit Office reports on the test and trace system, which was money almost totally wasted. There is also the money given to people who could quite easily have gone about their jobs. The businesses needed the money, given the decisions that the Government had taken, but the Government should not have taken those decisions.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that some of his comments are more relevant in hindsight than they might have been at the time? In March 2020, it was difficult to predict the path of the disease. We had seen pictures from around the world of hospital A&E departments overwhelmed by those turning up with respiratory problems, and Governments, not only here but around the world, had to respond to that. In hindsight, of course, what the hon. Gentleman is saying is accurate, but at the time we had to react in the way that we felt would protect the highest number of people and protect A&E departments from being overwhelmed. That required us to act quickly. Perhaps mistakes were made, but they are mistakes in hindsight.

[Graham Stringer]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman to a point. In March, when the first decisions were made, nobody knew what was going to happen. There was a panic to go into lockdown, which was understandable while people were seeing what was going on, but very soon after that people did know. What I think was, and is, indefensible was to carry on with policies that we knew were damaging the economy and were not protecting people. I therefore voted against my own party, which supported the Government and more on this issue. I went through the Lobby with a small number of colleagues from my party and the hon. Gentleman’s party to say that what was happening was wrong, and that the damage being done by the policies was probably worse than covid. It might be hindsight for March and April 2020, but not for the rest of the time and the second lockdown.

Once we knew the profile of the disease, we knew that we were damaging children. I go into schools and meet eight and nine-year-olds who were locked down when it was known that children were not at risk. A very small number of children died and, as far as I know, they all had comorbidities—I stand to be corrected—so covid was essentially safe for children. We have damaged both their mental health and their ability to learn. I go into schools from time to time, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman does, and teachers tell me that it is very difficult to catch up. I am still annoyed about the response, and I do not think it is hindsight.

I went through the Lobby with a minority of colleagues. One of the two failures of our democracy’s normal checks and balances was that this place was not functioning, as the Easter holiday was extended. Surely the most important thing in a crisis is for our democratic institutions to function properly. We could not ask proper questions and there were no follow-ups. We kept our Select Committee going but, with the best will in the world, it was a pale imitation of what had gone before. There was a complete failure to insist on more accountability from the Government while the economy was shut down. Some of us, although we were not very many, came here to try to keep it going.

Our democracy’s second important check and balance is the fourth estate. These publications are not normally my politics but, with the exception of The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, and the Daily Mail to a certain extent, the rest of the media, led by the BBC, were quite uncritical of what was happening. People say that BBC reporters were told not to criticise and not to ask difficult questions, and political journalists—not specialist health journalists who might have asked more pertinent questions—were sent to the press conferences. It was a political question, but it was also a science and health question. We were really let down by the BBC primarily, and by other parts of the media.

The hon. Member for Christchurch and other hon. Members have talked about the Hallett inquiry. I supported the inquiry but, having seen the way it has gone, I have given myself a good talking to. I do not think I will ever again support an inquiry. Do we really want to spend half a billion pounds on this inquiry? I attended the previous debate on recompense, and we heard how lawyers are getting fat on all these inquiries. I do not know when the Hallett inquiry will report, but it may well last for years and cost half a billion pounds. It certainly will not provide us with any advice on what to do if there is a pandemic next year—I suspect that advice is what we all want. By the time it reports, there may have been another Government or two and it will be a historical document. Sweden is not a perfect society, but its inquiry has reported. The motion before us calls for the fourth part of the inquiry, which will be on vaccines, but is the inquiry really the technical body to do that? I do not think so.

In the first stage, the inquiry has shown an extraordinary bias towards believing in lockdowns. I would want to know a number of things from an inquiry: did the lockdowns work? Did they save lives? Have they cost lives? Where did the virus come from? The inquiry is not even looking at that and it is not dealing with any of those things, but it is taking a long time. It has made it abundantly clear that it is going to look at the impact of the virus on social divisions and poverty. I am a member of the Labour party and I can tell the inquiry, because I know, that poor people come off worse from diseases. It can go back to look at the Black report from 1981, I believe it was, if it wants to see that, as it talks about both regional and class disparities. We do not need to look at this issue, as we know that poor people do badly when there are epidemics—that has been true for all time.

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[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

May I start by paying tribute to all the Members who have spoken in the debate? I have great respect for them all. It is a particular privilege to follow the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). He was a hero during the covid period. While so many of us were blindly following what the Government told us to do, he stood almost alone in making up his own mind.

I also acknowledge the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), and the work that he is doing to support the many, many families and people who have suffered adverse reactions, and I am proud to support him in that work. I have great affection and respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), who is doing a valiant job sticking up for his perspective in this debate. He is sitting directly behind the Minister, so I am not sure whether he is able to speak. None the less, I respect the position that he has taken.

I also wish to acknowledge the work done and the speech made by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen)—please do not start cheering, because Mr Deputy Speaker will close down the debate. He is not popular with Members on the Conservative Benches, but I think that we have an obligation to take what he says seriously, and to examine the evidence that he has brought to the House. He has an absolute right to make the case that he does in this place.

Finally, before I get on to the points in my speech, let me mention my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe). He made the essential point that we need more evidence. Fundamentally, we need the Government to be more open, and to instruct the agencies of the Government—the regulator and the health service—to provide the data that we need to get to the bottom of this issue. I implore the Minister to respond to that point in her wind-up.

I disagree with the suggestion from the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire that some fishy business was going on in how the ONS has been calculating excess deaths in recent years. Who knows? Perhaps there is some fishy business going on, but the ONS took the right decision to change the methodology. As Carl Heneghan and others have pointed out, the previous method of accounting for excess deaths—of taking an average over five years—actually led to an exaggeration of excess death numbers during the pandemic and, in a sense, contributed to the great anxiety that many people felt, which encouraged the lockdown, so it is right to rethink how excess deaths are calculated.

We know, by all the different measures, that many more people are dying now than were before the pandemic. That might be accounted for simply by an ageing population, by long covid, or by the effects of an NHS under pressure, but as we have heard today, there is significant evidence that other factors are at play. In particular, the impact on people’s hearts, and increasingly younger people’s hearts, deserves attention. The British Heart Foundation reported last June that since the start of the pandemic, 100,000 more people have died than would have been expected. That is surely significant cause for us to take this question seriously.

The question raised by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire is whether the vaccines have contributed to this increase in excess deaths. I hesitate to wade into this debate because I am not a scientist. I recognise the point made by others, particularly the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton, that science and politics are uncomfortable bedfellows. We know that there are adverse effects from the vaccination. Everybody acknowledges that; it is a question of the extent to which those effects have been manifested.

My particular concern—this goes back to my point about a request for evidence—is whether the system that oversees the licensing, regulation, monitoring and analysis of medical treatments in general, and vaccines in particular, is up to scratch. There is so much speculation in the debate about what is going on, and what is true and what is not, but we seem to have some facts that we can all agree on. The first, I am afraid, is that the MHRA is significantly deficient in the way it operates. The Cumberlege report—this was referenced in the earlier debate—raised concerns about the way treatments are regulated and licensed that have not yet been addressed. I am afraid that through the covid episode many of the same concerns were manifested in relation to the vaccines.

We now know that the MHRA knew about the effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine on blood clotting as early as February 2021, but issued a warning about that only some months later—in April, a month after other countries had suspended the AZ vaccine. The MHRA also knew about the prevalence of heart problems and myocarditis in February 2021 but did nothing about it until June that year. In the intervening time, millions of people were vaccinated without the knowledge that the MHRA had. As has been said, we found out recently that Pfizer misrepresented the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. There has been very little comeback against it for that, and no meaningful fine. As we heard, just a few thousands pounds were charged in expenses.

The regulatory system that oversees the pharmaceutical companies is surely deeply conflicted, not least due to being partly funded by the pharmaceutical companies that it was set up to represent. It is significant and of concern that they have made so much money out of the vaccines, and so far do not appear to be making due recompense for some of the acknowledged harms— I am not talking about the wilder claims—that their vaccines have been responsible for. Will the Minister enlighten us on whether the indemnities against civil and Government action that the Government awarded to the vaccine manufacturers at the beginning of the production process still apply if it transpires that the companies misled the Government and the public about the safety and efficacy of their product?

The inquiry has been mentioned. There are so many unanswered questions and apparent red flags that it surprises me that the media and Parliament are not more up in arms about excess deaths. I am surprised that more attention is not being paid to this question. The fact is that this scandal—if it is a scandal—suits no one in high places in our country. It is true that we have an inquiry, but as the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton said, surely it is asking the wrong questions. It is very concerning that the module looking at the vaccination programme has been postponed. It strikes me that the inquiry is essentially asking the wrong questions; it is really just asking why we did not do more lockdowns quicker. That seems to be its prevailing question for the experts—not whether the whole response was the right one, and crucially, in the light of what we now know, whether the final response of a mass vaccination programme was as safe and effective as was claimed.

We are rightly proud in this country of the effectiveness, speed and operation of the vaccine production and roll-out. It was a triumph of effective collaboration between Government and the private sector. The operation of the roll-out was a victory that all people can acknowledge, but it is not enough to say that the roll-out was done well. Was it done safely? Did it need to be done on the scale on which it was done? Particularly, did young people need to be vaccinated at all? We all remember Kate Bingham and others saying early on that the vaccine was only for the older population. These questions are increasingly being asked by the public and raised in the media.

Let me conclude quickly with what I have been doing. I hope that we will get more answers from the Minister than I have had so far from the Government. On 17 April 2023—a year ago yesterday—I wrote privately to the Secretary of State, asking him for evidence that justified the Government’s assertion that there was no link between the vaccines and the excess deaths. I did that because I had so much correspondence from people raising that concern. I said:

“I am writing privately in this way rather than raising the question in Parliament because I am determined not to give credence to unscientific, conspiratorial accusations, nor to undermine the vaccination programme in public if it is, indeed, entirely safe and effective.”

I did not want to do this in public; I wanted to give the Government the opportunity to give me the evidence, so that I could pass it back to constituents, but I am afraid that the reply I received from a Minister was the one that we have already heard: the bland assertion that a combination of factors—flu, old age and so on—probably accounts for the excess deaths. The rest of the letter was all about what the Government were doing to combat excess deaths, and the answer was mostly “more vaccines.” I did not think that was good enough.

A year rolled by, the evidence seemed to mount, and more and more people were raising this concern, so I joined the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Sir Philip Davies), who could not be here today—he wanted me to explain that he is on important constituency business but is very much here in spirit—and others in writing this time a public letter to the Government asking the same question in more detail. We asked specifically, “What is the evidence for the definitive statement about safety and efficacy?” The Government said:

“There is no evidence linking excess deaths to the vaccine.”

If so, that is great news, but may we have the evidence on which that assertion is based?

Secondly, we asked: “Will the Department for Health, the MHRA, and the UKSHA release the data that is needed to understand what is going on?” The data that we are asking for is already made available privately to pharmaceutical companies for them to use in their safety studies of the vaccine. Why do they get it, but not the public? Why cannot independent scientists look at that data? I am sorry to say that we had replies neither to that letter, which was written in February—here we are in April—nor, after months, to the freedom of information requests that went to the agencies.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I do not know why the Government would not want to release the data. It may be that the data could be misused and misrepresented. One way around that might be to invite research applications from our very sophisticated research ecosystem. Researchers could be given access to the data if they came forward with particular research projects. They would then be able to report on it, with external verification that they had actually used the data supplied, and not drifted too far from it.

[Danny Kruger]

That sort of practical suggestion should be considered. I would be interested in hearing the Government’s response to that. We are asking for anonymised data that poses no risk to any individuals. If the data is open and public, and the whole purpose is scientific interrogation and analysis, it should not be possible to misuse it. We need as much sunlight on that data as possible.

Let me end by repeating the commitment that I hope we will get from the Minister. I have been asking for anonymised, record-level, official mortality data, including vaccination status. That information, which is already being shared with drug companies, should be shared with Parliament and the public. If that is not possible, could the Minister explain why? Secondly, what are the sources for the definitive statement that the Government have made, most recently in October 2023—and that, I dare say, they might make again today—about there being no evidence of a link between the excess death figures and the covid-19 vaccines? I hope that there is no link. I took the vaccine—at least the first two jabs—as did most of my family and my constituents. I am sure that most people in the Public Gallery took it. We all did. I hope that the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire is wrong to assert that there is a dangerous connection.

I am reluctant to be branded a conspiracy theorist, and I still do not want to give credence to unscientific assertions, but we in this place are here to take risks—the risks of ridicule and contempt—in exchange for the privilege of being here, and I think it is right that we raise these concerns on behalf of the public, even when there is some political cost. Too many people are dying, and we must understand why.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

I will not give way; I am just opening.

I disagree with the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in this respect. I think it is evident from the covid death data during the pandemic throughout the lockdowns that covid-related deaths came down significantly almost immediately as the vaccine was rolled out. What we can say, as the hon. Member for Christchurch did in his contribution, is that for many millions of people in this country, the vaccine was a success and it allowed us to return to lives that were as near normal as possible. However, we must not underestimate the fact that covid-19 was a massive killer in this country. We only have to look at the wall across the river from the Palace of Westminster to see the impact covid-19 had on communities up and down the country. I and the Opposition remain firmly of the view that the covid-19 vaccines played a massive, fundamental role in returning life to normal.

As happens with any form of medical intervention, there have been instances of harmful side effects—no one disputes that—and when those are found, they should of course be properly investigated. The efficacy of drugs needs to be reviewed over periods of time, and the science needs to be fully understood and responded to. That, I think, is true of any drug that is available on the national health service. I should also say that the hon. Member for Christchurch raised some very fair points about the covid vaccine damage payment scheme. We have had debates about it in Westminster Hall, and I think he is right to raise those concerns as eloquently as he does.

I will always be open to the testing of scientific evidence, but, as a number of Members have pointed out today, for millions of us the vaccines have been a game changer in overcoming the worst fears of covid-19. They have allowed us to return to normality, and, most important of all, they have saved lives. We do need to understand more about why for some they have caused reactions, and in some cases may have tragically led to fatalities, which is why I think the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock was right to say that we need to get to the bottom of that data. But investigation and review should not be allowed to frighten people who, to this day, are still deeply vulnerable, away from taking the covid vaccine boosters, and it is important for us to send out the message that those who need the boosters should have them.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I should put it on record that I am fully vaccinated, that I was a supporter of the vaccines when they first came out, and that I am a supporter of them now and will continue to be. I think that they play a huge role in managing serious disease. My concern at the moment is that the tone of some of this debate is undermining not only the reputation of our scientists, but the efficacy of vaccine programmes in the future. I do not want to shut down the debate about the topic. We need to find a way of filling the evidence gap, and I hope we can do that collectively by encouraging research so that potentially wild and untested theories do not fill that vacuum.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. We know that there is a cohort of people for whom the covid-19 vaccines have led to reactions, and we know that there is, tragically, a cohort of people who have died. We need to learn more about the impact of this set of vaccines on that cohort, but for the vast majority of people the covid-19 vaccines have been a huge success, and we should not let people think that they are at risk from them. In fact, many people who are being asked right now to take the vaccines because they are immunosuppressed are at risk of not taking them, and we need to ensure that they are protected. I, too, am fully vaccinated, and because of my own ongoing health issues I have just been invited for my next booster, which I will be taking.

We know that the virus itself has been a key driver of excess mortality, and it continues to have an impact across our communities to this day. I understand that, and I understand that covid affects many people. I still struggle with long covid. In fact, my long covid has been much worse than the actual covid infection that I got in March 2020, way before any vaccines were even dreamt of. There are lots of people who are in a far worse situation, because they have not yet been able to return to work or to near full fitness. Even to this day, I still struggle with the impacts of a covid infection right at the start of the first wave of covid in March 2020, and it debilitated me for the best part of two years.

Millions of clinically vulnerable people—the hon. Member for Christchurch rightly raised this—continue to shield and live with the constant reminder of the impact that the virus can have on them, because they are not able to take the vaccine and they do not have the necessary level of protection for their own health needs to be able to return to anything like a near normal lifestyle. He mentioned Evusheld and Evusheld 2, and I very much support the right of clinically vulnerable communities to access those drugs so that they can regain the freedoms that we have all benefited from. I will continue to communicate with those communities and, where I can, seek to amplify their concerns.

Yes, covid is part of the picture, but across the board we have seen an increase in the incidence of major conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, all of which have contributed to the figures on excess deaths. The way to fight back against those numbers is to inform people responsibly about their health and wellbeing, and about the measures that are in place to protect them. It is also about ensuring that our health service is fit for the future. We need an NHS that is rooted in the communities that it serves, ensuring that people can access care when and where they need it. The NHS must embrace new technologies as essential for diagnosing and treating people as quickly as possible, and it must move from being a national sickness service to putting prevention front and centre. Only by doing so can we have an NHS that learns the lessons from the pandemic and ensures that, where mistakes were made in the past, they are learned from and not repeated in future pandemics.

That is the kind of thing we need to do as a Parliament, and it is the kind of thing that I hope the next Labour Government will be able to do. Until then, we will fully support the current Government in making sure the message is sent out loudly and clearly that the covid-19 vaccine is the best way of protecting yourself and your loved ones from what is still a terrible virus.