Public Health

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Why will you be able to buy a pint in a sports venue without getting anything to eat, but if you order a pint in a pub, you will have to have a substantial meal? I will leave that hanging as the great existential question of the day.

Suppression in anticipation of vaccination is the reason for the measures before us today, but people have been writing to me for months terrified that a vaccine will be compulsory. I have responded by saying, “Don’t be so absolutely ridiculous—that could never possibly happen. We are a Conservative Government, after all.” Yet now we discover that vaccination may be a passport to the acquisition of your civil liberties, without which you will have all sorts of things that you would otherwise be able to do denied to you. That would be absolutely disproportionate to a virus with a mortality rate verging on 1%. It would equally be a terrible precedent to set for other vaccines and medicines. I therefore hope that we can get away from that.

The way to persuade people to have a vaccine is, of course, to line up the entire Government and their Ministers, and their loved ones, let them take it first, and then get all the luvvies—the icons of popular culture—out on the airwaves singing its praises. To have any kind of suggestion of coercion absolutely feeds the conspiracy theory that we are being cowed and our liberty is being taken away.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is not enough for the Government merely to refrain from coercing people—they also have to pay attention to implicit coercion whereby they turn a blind eye to allowing businesses like airlines and restaurants to refuse to let people in unless they have had the vaccination? The Government have to decide whether they are willing to allow people to discriminate on that basis.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

That would be discrimination. It would be vaccinationism, which we must of course resist.

The other thing that any kind of coercion would do is to set the seal on this Government’s reputation as the most authoritarian since the Commonwealth of the 1650s; but it is as nothing to the enthusiasm that we have seen from the Opposition Front Bench for even more coercive and restrictive measures.

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[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

This is a dangerous moment in the life of our country. People feel they have been pushed too far, pushed about too much, and pushed too hard; they have suffered too much. We think first, of course, of the coronavirus patients who have died and their families and friends, and the NHS staff who have cared for them, with all the mental health issues they have suffered. We think of the long-covid patients who have been squeezed out of hospital by coronavirus. Let that be understood—by coronavirus, not by lockdown. We think of businesses that were shut down by the Government and have lost custom, because of coronavirus, not lockdown, but also patients who did not attend hospital because they were afraid to do so. People have experienced alcohol and drug misuse, reduced physical activity, malnutrition, self-harm, domestic violence and suicide. One can talk to anyone in their 20s or 30s who is single and feels they have been missing out on one of the best years of their life.

Quantifying these wellbeing issues is the, I am afraid, dreary task of health economics. People like me have not just been looking for economic analysis; we have been looking for serious analysis of the harms and benefits of the Government’s policies in terms of coronavirus so that we can see seriously, but bearing in mind all the factors at work, the Government’s policy in the context of the right way forward. The Government’s analysis should have compared, let us say, the John Snow memorandum or the Great Barrington declaration with where the Government stand. I have provided the Government with a plan that lies between them and Great Barrington. The point would be to show proportionality, the effects, the achievements that would come, and the benefits, to allow serious judgments. I have here the analysis of a QC provided to me, where he says that the Government’s analysis does not allow the test of proportionality to be answered.

That leaves us with a problem, because the Government are asking us to vote on these measures not knowing whether they are proportionate. Looking at some of the models that were provided to us, such as the DEFRA projection, Government scientists presented it to us and then would not stand over the figures, and it turns out that they were right not to do so.

[Adam Afriyie]

Apologies for the interruption, but I saw the so-called impact assessment and I have to say that it would not pass through the boardroom of a small business. It really was not up to it. Does my hon. Friend share that view?

[Mr Baker]

I do agree with my hon. Friend, who is well qualified to say that.

The hospital capacity projection from the SPI-M-O medium-term modelling, which was leaked, says that it “takes three weeks for non-pharmaceutical interventions to have any impact on hospital admissions, therefore the window to act is now”—in bold and underlined. The trouble is that drawing a vertical line on it through 21 days after 5 November, we find that three hospital trusts should have been exceeding surge capacity, including the Nightingales, and it just did not happen.

We now need to start having a serious look at modelling. I provided a paper to the Government on how to reform modelling. We also need to have a serious look at how we deal with expert advice in this complex, contested field. I have provided a paper to the Government on how to do that. I believe that we need a new public health Act that can allow us better to balance the need—the absolute need—to infringe people’s civil liberties with people’s fears that they are being infringed too much, again to show proportionality.

Again, I have reached out to a judicial expert in the field, and he provided us with a one-pager, which I have given to the Government, on what should be done. I have also, by working with independent scientists, come up with that more liberal plan that stands between where the Government are and moving in the direction towards a freer system. Again, that has been provided to the Government. No one can say that I or anyone working with me have not done our duty, but here we stand in a profoundly dangerous moment, heading into infringements on our liberties and on vaccination and testing that we would never normally tolerate. Therefore, I find, with huge reluctance, that I am going to have to vote no tonight, to send a message to the Government.

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[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Before I make my brief remarks, I am reminded of the quote by Teddy Roosevelt, who spoke of the person in the arena. I rather feel that my hon. Friend the Minister is that person at the moment, while everybody else around her carps on without any particular responsibility. My apologies to her on a personal level if I now fall into that category.

Many people have been in touch with me, as I am sure they have been in touch with us all, to advance all kinds of wild conspiracy theories that seem to abound about covid. I will have no truck with them whatsoever. There has been an outbreak of armchair epidemiologists, for sure, in the past eight months or so. There is no conspiracy. In my brief experience of it, the British state has never been competent enough to mount or organise such a conspiracy. Indeed, if it were so, in the present climate plans for that would have leaked already, so we would have been well aware of that issue. [Laughter.]

[Mr Steve Baker]

That is a very important point, amusing as it is. Those of us who have seen behind the curtain know that my hon. Friend is right not just about the British state but every state. They do not have the competence or capability to run a conspiracy.

[Mr Wragg]

Absolutely right.

We are told that non-essential retail can reopen—hurrah! But I am not quite sure why we would express great surprise—