International Health Regulations

Suella Braverman Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

We will not be handing over any kind of control over what we do domestically; national sovereignty is a clear red line, as I made clear in my opening remarks. It is important to recognise that there are challenges with these things, which are being negotiated within the existing international health regulations. The director general of the World Health Organisation already has the ability to declare a public health event of international concern and issue temporary recommendations that provide non-binding guidance to member states. We believe that we need to stay in a situation where the World Health Organisation has an important convening role internationally to discuss issues, but the domestic response to any future pandemic is for domestic Governments to make. Anything that impinges on UK national sovereignty will therefore be unacceptable to us.

[Suella Braverman (Fareham) (Con)]

I want to put on the record my thanks to the Minister for his hard work and for taking the time last week to meet me and colleagues to discuss the terms of this treaty. He will know that I am profoundly sceptical about the World Health Organisation’s ability to manage a global pandemic, in the light of serious errors of judgment, poor leadership and, I am afraid, well-chronicled conflicts of interest that have subsequently emerged. Of course we can help poorer countries and collaborate with other nations, but under no circumstances must we surrender our sovereignty or sign up to a lockdown charter. I hear what he says about how the text currently on the table does not bind our hands, but he will know, as many of us do, that in the heat of an emergency during a real pandemic, irresistible pressure will mount on a Government to make decisions that may well turn out to be wholly harmful, as we found, and the wrong decisions for the good of the country. Will he agree that, fundamentally, to coin a phrase, no pandemic treaty is better than a bad pandemic treaty?

[Andrew Stephenson]

I 100% agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that no treaty is better than a bad treaty. However, if we scroll back to why this process was originally started, it was the former Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip who led the international calls for this accord. The reason behind it is that we believe that commitments on stronger international collaboration and co-operation on global health are crucial to securing the UK’s health and economic security. However, domestic decisions still have to be left to sovereign nation states to take the right decisions for their countries. I think there is a lot of agreement between my right hon. and learned Friend and me, and I thank her once again for engaging in such constructive fashion and for meeting me to express her and other parliamentarians’ views.