Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I welcome my right hon. Friend to his new role, I wish him every success and I support his plan to unlock soon.
Will he look at expediting trials of other drugs and treatments that may help covid-19 patients and have been looked at elsewhere? Will he also encourage work on air extraction and cleaning systems, to see what more can be done to stop transmission of the disease, as we are going to have to live with it to some extent?
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mr Sajid Javid): I thank my right hon. Friend for his welcome. On his question, I simply say yes, I will.
June 29, 2021
Good question, nice short positive answer. As ever no time scale so in the light of previous history, meaningless.
June 29, 2021
No one needs to ask questions like these in New Zealand – or in China for that matter.
June 30, 2021
Who asks pertinent questions of the CCP? Is the asker still alive?
June 29, 2021
My question. If a clinician reads of the success of a particular drug in dealing with aspects of Covid 19 in say the US equivalent of The Lancet, are there barriers in preventing him from using the same drug in the UK. Accepting that the drug might have been approved for use in treating some unrelated ailment. How much freedom does a qualified clinician have.
June 29, 2021
We in the UK mainly use the BNF as a guide to prescribing. Invomectin is listed as unlicensed.”When the clinical need cannot be met by licensed medicines; such use should be supported by appropriate evidence and experience.” The questions are Have we got enough of either use of invomectin or people with the experience of using this drug in the UK? If a clinician was appointed to the UK and had that experience backed up by evidence then legally he or she can use it
June 29, 2021
I can’t give chapter and verse, but should a clinician use a drug for a radically different disease than that it is licensed for, s/he might well find a lawsuit looming if things go wrong.
June 29, 2021
I would think a qualified physician has to follow the rules of the country in which he/she is practicing. Each country is responsible for accepting or not the use or not of a given medicine. For example the AZ vaccine has not (yet?) been accepted for use in the USA, and all AZ doses have now been sent to Canada and Mexico. Even AZ vaccinated Brits might have problems going to some US spots, like theatres.
Within the EU27+EEA the EMA authorises the vaccines.
June 29, 2021
I don’t welcome him. Any politician using the phrase “Build Back Better” is rather sinister in my opinion. Why do so many politicians around the world use this phrase and what does it mean? It’s as if they are letting some higher organisation know they are part of the club ready to do their bidding in exchange for power. I don’t think this bodes well for ordinary folk.
June 29, 2021
+1. This is exactly what is going on. Hancock shoehorned the phrase into his departure speech. In order to ‘Build Back’ you have to first destroy, and it is our society and way of life they intend to destroy, with no democratic mandate or even Parliamentary debate. It seems that the Conservative party has an inner circle and people like Graham Brady, IDS, and our man are on the outside looking in.
June 29, 2021
Does anyone want to “build back worse”? Rather like “an integrated transport” system did anyone want a disintegrated one? Or my “lived experience” can one have an experience while dead. Or “the people’s vote” to overturn Brexit. Who voted first time was it cats or parrots?
Most politicians statement in general say one of two things, either they say things so obviously true as to be not worth saying or they push blatant falsehoods. Perhaps the most common lie is that “the NHS is the envy of the world”, I note no one tries to copy it it kills thousands and fails millions.
June 29, 2021
Well said lifelogic…
We must have a pot of tea together some time…
June 29, 2021
Hmmm. A not altogether unencouraging response but there was not a “question” but two of them and no word was uttered about when, with what purpose and thoroughness. The new Secretary of State does know we are on his case, does he Sir John?
June 29, 2021
+1
I also picked up the 2 questions and 1 answer.
June 29, 2021
Commendably so. A Minister would have to get up very early to have a chance of getting anything past us Redwoodistas, vigilant and committed as we are.
June 29, 2021
Well done!
Fingers crossed then.
June 29, 2021
Two questions were asked, one answer was given. Was he was answering both, or was he playing the usual ‘economical with the truth’ card and was really only answering one?
Which one? That’s easy, the one that doesn’t remove the power and control freakery stranglehold on the people and the economy.
My cynicism is a direct result of years of political lies where I now no longer trust and question what most politicians say. They cannot hardly complain, it is afterall, self inflicted.
June 29, 2021
Your contribution was mentioned in a rather personal way by a Zoe Williams in the Guardian. Please note I don’t normally read the paper but the headline hooked me on Google News.
June 29, 2021
The case for using Ivermectin has been made many times. It is a safe, cheap medication which has been shown to work at all levels of covid-19 disease from prophylaxis to intensive care. Ivermectin has WHO endorsement as Essential Medicine.
The fact that it hasn’t been used by the NHS is a scandal, especially as the current treatment emphasis is on risky untested medicines. It looks as though vested interests are more important than saving lives.
Please ask The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about the use of Ivermectin.
Conservative Woman has the story here.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/scandal-of-the-suppressed-case-for-ivermectin/
June 29, 2021
Conservative Woman have raised this issue before, what a pity mainstream media don’t.
Then we’d have to have a media not being paid to perpetuate the fear, with a watchdog ensuring anything not in line gets labelled as fake news or misinformation, and that we don’t seem to have.
June 29, 2021
There is this 04/2/2021 report from the Merck lab in Kenilworth, NJ, not particularly supportive of ivermectin.
Even the cheapness can be debated, it appears to be around ÂŁ40 for 8 tablets.
June 29, 2021
John, can’t you ask open questions ‘How do you plan to expedite trials of new drugs on what timeframe’? and ‘How can you open up an investigation on air extraction and cleaning systems, do you see this as a priority for the next month’?
Then he can’t just say Yes.
Reply Yes means he will and I will follow up
June 30, 2021
You can’t see if he had his fingers crossed behind his back on the response!
June 29, 2021
I too would like to know ‘why?’
‘This ‘conservative government have totally destroyed our country, our physical and mental health, our jobs and businesses, our children’s education and childhood, all based on a fake ‘pandemic. YET they are still carrying on, adding to the endless misery and despair. WHY?
What has happened to our elected MP’s? What has taken over the minds of 67 million people that we do nothing to stop them. How will we answer our children, grandchildren in years to come when they ask us WHY did we let them. How can we rid ourselves of these wicked people? Does anyone ANYONE have any answers?’
June 29, 2021
100%
Have read a lot of explanations. No idea what to believe!
Johnson has always been very keen on China ( would China just take him away? Plz.) He was tickled pink when the sheeple allowed him to behave like China and mask and imprison us all!
But it must be more complex than that.
June 29, 2021
Well one of the major issues surrounding everything wrong here is the fact that we don’t have a Conservative party.
All they are conserving is Blair’s New Labour policies on many issues from immigration, education, and a health service stuffed to the gills with over paid middle management. Then there are the big bucks for quango’s, consultancies, and questions around favours for others.
You hold the answer yourself because you’ve recognised the rot and you can’t really build on something rotten. Once more people recognise it and they are doing so, then they will also realise they hold the answer and are not duty bound out of allegiance to a party or family voting habits to keep putting in those responsible for all you lament.
Ferguson and Hancock’s obvious belief that the rules were only meant for the little people. The arrival of the Indian delegation during a time when their country was supposed to be suffering a highly deadly variant.
The G7 get together and the football VIP’s.
All that (and I bet there’s more besides) while we are supposed to be dicing with death every time we step outside!!! People must be stupid to keep believing it.
June 29, 2021
Wow …. a straight answer to two straight questions.
June 29, 2021
Off topic, prepare to get on your knees, fellow Brittunculi, and humbly thank the empire for its generosity:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/eu-preparing-grant-concessions-brexit-24421217
“EU preparing to grant concessions on Brexit ‘sausage war’ with deal tomorrow”
“Brussels is expected to offer a three month extension to the “grace period” tomorrow, allowing sausages and cold meats to cross the border”
And thank our tribal leaders Theresa and Boris for getting a fantastic deal for a mere ÂŁ34 billion.
June 29, 2021
Here are the conditions imposed by non-imperial imperial fiat:
https://www.rte.ie/news/brexit/2021/0629/1232017-chilled-meats-protocol/
and here is the clip of Boris Johnson telling Sophy Ridge:
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/find-you-courage-bbc-clip-of-johnson-promising-seamless-trade-between-gb-and-ni-goes-viral-274034/
“There is no question of there being checks on goods going NI to GB or GB to NI”
June 30, 2021
RTE “Sources say the UK’s unilateral declaration effectively means London is acknowledging that such meats can be sourced in Northern Ireland, or other EU member states, including the South, rather than from Great Britain.”
Did Boris and Frost say and from the same date the same checks are required on the products from the EU into the UK to protect our loss of trade to Northern Ireland? As the EU now has an advantage. Our negotiation has been weak this playing field needs levelling from the same date. Tell us the products that from July we will not be able to send into our Northern Ireland territory.
June 29, 2021
Sir John, perhaps you could suggest to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care that, he read today’s article by Edmund Fordham in the Conservative Woman website.
June 29, 2021
Dr Edmund Fordham (a good one for LL: BA and MA from U.Cambridge) a physicist now retired (apart from his consultancies with TCW) after years of applying Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to oil-bearing rocks. Does that make him an expert in all things linked to possible therapeutics to be applied to prevent/cure Covid?
Just asking. Please let me know.
He might be as much an expert as the 14k+ who signed the GBD, for what I could understand.
Would you have your teeth cared for by a podiatrist?
June 29, 2021
422 illegal migrants crossed the channel in small boats during the past three days
Is this government bothered?
June 29, 2021
Until their claims have been heard we do not know the proportion of them who have no right to be here.
You couldn’t care less though, could you?
June 30, 2021
I care immensely about refugees, and genuine legal migration – you’re correct I don’t care about the young male illegal economic migration that travel from a safe nation, by illegal means
June 30, 2021
MiC, do you know how many people are employed processing these claims?
Are these people paid to process claims state employees working from home or is this subcontracted out to private law firms?
How many hours of work did the UK get billed to process them last year?
How much was billed in total for this work?
How many people were processed for that fee?
Was it apportioned to our foreign aid budget?
June 30, 2021
why risk life and limb if you have a right to be here? Nice sunny day, flat calm, watch the big ships create some bouncing waves…..get met by a welcoming boat with all found. Whats not to like.
June 30, 2021
Martin, my guess is 0% have a right to be here. What’s your guess?
June 29, 2021
Mr. Javid might let us have his views also on whether herd immunity is still viewed as achievable, it being the bedrock of the Department’s scientific advisors ‘ strategy from the outset.
(As you likely are aware, there is debate now fairly widely in the scientific research community about whether the vaccine strategy (given the types of vaccine are not sterelizing vaccine, able to activate the whole immune system to kill off the virus, but rather targetted only upon the protein spikes on the surface of the Covid virus) might actually foster variants which might overcome the vaccines in use. Those vaccinated, specially if awaiting a second dose, present risk as they can still be infected with Covid (each one then becoming “laboratories” for developing variants) and can pass infection to the non-vaccinated, likely with more frequency than from any other source. Accordingly, what this would create, so I understand, represents the antithesis of herd immunity since large numbers of people do not cease being infectious, rather they promote infection including by spreading new, possibly vaccine-defeating, variants.)
June 29, 2021
Someone should suggest he gets the office desktop a good wipe down, one never knows…
June 29, 2021
I think people in the country in general are being unfair to Matt Hancock (not about his personal life but about his record during last year of pandemic which was a pretty big challenge to face).
June 30, 2021
I would have asked more but that was brief enough to ensure he got the point.
For next time, please ask:
– for the official review of government action on CV to be done immediately;
– for SAGE to be replaced – they are not suitably qualified.
June 30, 2021
Sir John, I wonder if you would ask Mr Javid why it’s O/K for thousands of football fans to enter Wembley stadium and all surrounding pubs for several hours. Yet I cannot have seven people in my house (even if they are all fully vaccinated) I’m puzzled.
June 30, 2021
Football fans are teetotal, your guests might not be?