John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):

Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the lack of accountability? We are having an extensive and public examination of the Government’s response to covid, but there is no comparable examination of the important decisions and advice that the WHO offered to the whole world, and it probably had more influence.

Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con):

My right hon. Friend is, as ever, absolutely right. We should all be concerned about that and concerned that we do not end up falling into the same problems as we have had in the past, being in a position where there is nothing we can do about it and sleepwalking into a disaster.

We are talking about a top-down approach to global public health hardwired into international law. At the top of that top-down approach we have our single source of truth on all things pandemic: the World Health Organisation’s director general, who it appears will have the sole authority to decide when and where these regulations will be deployed. Let us not forget that the director general is appointed by an opaque, non-democratic process—and I think that is being rather generous.

Rather worryingly, in their response to this petition the Government have said they are

“supporting the process of agreeing targeted amendments of the IHR as a means of strengthening preparedness for and response to future health emergencies; including through increasing compliance and implementation of the IHR”.

They have also previously said that they support

“a new legally-binding instrument”

—that certainly sounds like a threat to parliamentary sovereignty to me. Will the Minister commit today to laying those plans before Parliament so they can be properly debated, and if I had my way, robustly rejected?

It is also vital to take a step back and understand what is driving this pandemic preparedness agenda. At a recent meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery, Dr David Bell gave a briefing on how the World Health Organisation, with the backing of the World Bank, says these amendments are the only way to prepare for future pandemics that it says are getting more frequent, and where there is more risk from zoonotic—animal to human—spread. The reality is that the WHO’s figures do not tell the whole story. When we take into account population growth, significant natural pandemics are rare events. We also have to take into account that there has been a huge expansion of tests and genome sequencing over the last few decades. The invention of polymerase chain reaction testing, for example, has had a massive impact on the detection rate of those outbreaks that the World Health Organisation is now using to justify its agenda.

Since the Spanish flu over 100 years ago, we have only had two pandemics above the average yearly seasonal influenza mortality rates, thanks to antibiotics and advances in modern medical care. We hear a lot about disease outbreaks that actually have low mortality burdens when compared to other public health threats: for example, in 2003, SARS-CoV-1—severe acute respiratory syndrome —had the equivalent disease burden of about five hours of tuberculosis. Funnily enough, in its 2019 pandemic influenza recommendations, the World Health Organisation itself could find no evidence that serious zoonotic pandemics were increasing. What is undoubtedly increasing are the eye-watering costs of managing pandemics, with vast sums of taxpayer money being wasted on poorly conceived initiatives, such as locking down the economy for two years.

It seems to me that the World Health Organisation has no need to rush any of this—we have time to reassess and get it right—and it seems I am not the only one to think that. In recent weeks, we have seen signs that some countries, including Estonia, Slovakia and New Zealand, are looking to question the proposals. It is not clear if any member states have submitted formal notices to reject them and opt out, but New Zealand does appear to have lodged a reservation to allow the incoming Government more time to consider whether the amendments are consistent with a national interest test required by New Zealand law. That is entirely sensible, and I would like to see our own Government take a pause to apply some critical thinking to this situation before blindly supporting the World Health Organisation’s installation as our new global public health power.

It is absolutely essential that the Government make a clear and unambiguous promise that they will neither support nor abide by anything that in any way undermines our national sovereignty. We have not spent so many years battling to get out of the frying pan of the EU to jump straight back into the fire with the equally unaccountable, undemocratic and hopeless World Health Organisation.

Andrew Stephenson:

I do not believe it is right to name those civil servants. I am the overall lead on this in the Department of Health and Social Care. I am working closely and have already met with the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). Many other Government Departments will also have a very clear interest in this, including the life sciences Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith). Any treaty agreed will of course be subject to cross-Government write-rounds in the usual fashion, to agree a UK-wide position. It is fair to say that there will not just be one pair of eyes from the ministerial ranks looking at this. There will be multiple pairs of eyes looking at this from across Government to ensure that when we get to a deal, it is a deal that can be agreed across Government and that we believe is in the UK national interest.

John Redwood:

The possibility that the language may shift from saying “may” to “shall” is fundamental. I welcome all that the Minister has said about the current collaboration. I am glad it is working so well, but that is based on advice and urging, rather than requirement. It seems to me that this is just like the British people voting for the Common Market with the assurance that we had a veto on any law we did not like, but then somebody came along and took the vetoes away without seeking the British people’s permission, and the relationship went wrong from thereon. This could do exactly the same to the WHO, if we take away the veto.

Andrew Stephenson:

I hear where my right hon. Friend comes from and I share his concern. As I hope he will recognise, the WHO is led by its 193 member states, which are currently negotiating this. All international health regulations to date have been agreed by consensus, and we would hope that any changes to the regulations are also agreed by consensus. As I say, there are many amendments and parts of the draft that we would not agree to in their current form. I believe these negotiations will hopefully get us into a position—because I believe it is in all our interests and in the national interest—to agree revisions to the IHR. That has to be done through negotiation and consensus. I think that having an approaching deadline focuses minds, and I think it is the right thing to do.

I will give another concrete example of why I believe this is important. During the pandemic, the genomic data shared by our friends in India and elsewhere helped us to tailor vaccines as new variants emerged around the globe. We all saw over the pandemic that, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston said, no one is safe until everyone is safe and that global problems require global solutions.

The best way to protect the UK from the next pandemic is by ensuring all WHO members can contain and respond effectively to public health events through compliance with strengthened IHR. Targeted amendments to the IHR will further strengthen our global health security, by helping Governments plan together, detect pathogens swiftly, and share data where helpful and necessary. The pandemic highlighted weaknesses in the implementation of the IHR for global health emergency response. For example, covid demonstrated that the IHR could be strengthened through a more effective early-warning system with a rapid risk assessment trigger for appropriate responses to public health threats.

Preet Kaur Gill:

We all know that Rwanda is just a gimmick by this Government, and I think that I have already set out my position very clearly. I will continue to make my remarks so that the Government are absolutely clear as to where we stand on this issue.

I am pleased that the zero draft highlighted that states must retain sovereignty, and that the implementation of the regulations

“shall be with the full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons”.

I ask the Minister to take this opportunity to update us on the progress being made in negotiations over the amendments and the draft text. Can he reassure our constituents that the Government would not sign up to anything that would compromise the UK’s ability to take domestic decisions on national public health measures?

John Redwood (Wok) (Con):

I do not understand the hon. Lady’s argument. This amendment to the regulations would mean that the WHO could decide that there was a health crisis in our country, whether we thought there was or not. It could then tell us how we had to handle it in far more detail than its advisory work during the covid crisis—it would be mandatory. What does she not understand about that and why does she not disagree with it? [Interruption.]

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):

I hope that the Minister will listen very carefully to the debate and the petitioners, because it would be a grave error were the Government to sign a treaty that gives away important powers over the future conduct of health policy. It is wrong to give to the WHO the sole power to decide when there is an emergency, and it is wrong to give away our powers of self-decision were such an emergency to be visited upon us.

We are, of course, members of the WHO, and I think we all agree that we should continue to be members of the WHO. We should share our information; we should draw on its research, and it will draw on research and knowledge in this country, where there is much medical and pharmaceutical company expertise, and together, as collaborators, we may get to better answers in the future. However, it would be quite wrong to vest the power of decision in people so far away from our own country who are not in full knowledge of the local circumstances.

Before any such power is vested in the WHO, there should be a proper inquiry and debate about how it performed over the course of the most recent covid pandemic. Why, for example, did the WHO seemingly concentrate on vaccines, rather than other methods of handling the problem? Why was there the delay or difficulty in testing existing drugs, which had already passed proper safety procedures and might have had beneficial or easing effects for those who got the condition? Why was more work not done on use of ultraviolet light behind the scenes in airflow systems, to clean up air when circulating? Why was more consideration not given to isolation hospitals and health centres, given that, unfortunately, quite a lot of the disease was spread through health premises. With the use of isolation, other healthcare could have continued during the course of covid treatment without so much cross-contamination within general hospitals. Why were there not recommendations and advice on isolation?

Why was there not more careful consideration of whether it would be better to concentrate on ensuring that those who were most vulnerable were protected from the presence of the disease as much as possible, rather than trying to lock down whole populations and then having to make exemptions so that we could keep the lights on and some food could be delivered to people’s homes? There was something rather arbitrary about who was allowed to go to work and who was not.

Why was more work not done by the WHO on cleaning up the data? We were given comparisons between countries, but when we looked beneath the data, we discovered that those countries were using very different definitions of what a covid death was. In individual countries, under the impact of the wave of the disease, there were often great difficulties in carrying out proper diagnosis of whether someone did have covid, or whether other medical problems that the person was suffering from were more likely to have caused the death. Some countries took a very tough line, saying that anybody with covid died of covid, even though they might have had lots of other conditions, so those countries had big figures, while other countries took a rather narrow view and said, “Well, this person was in their mid-80s and they were suffering from another a number of other conditions that might have led to the difficulties.”

Andrew Bridgen:

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concerns that the WHO refuses to conduct any review of the recommendations it issued during the covid-19 pandemic, so sure is it that its advice and recommendations were absolutely perfect? If we sign up to these instruments, we will only get more of the same.

John Redwood:

That is one of my worries. We need more transparency, debate, discussion and challenge of those in the well-paid positions at the WHO, so that science can advance.

As I understand scientific method, it is not choosing a limited number of scientists and believing everything they say; it is having a population of talented and able scientists who challenge each other, because then we get more truth out of the challenge and exchange of ideas. We do not want an international body saying, “There’s only one way to look at this problem or to think about it.” We need that process of challenge, and we need it to be an accelerated process. When we have an urgent and immediate need of better medicines, vaccines, procedures and approaches to lockdown or non-lockdown, that is surely the time for healthy debate, constant review and sufficient humility by all of us who venture opinions, because time and events could disprove them very quickly. If that happens, we should learn from the process and be honest about it, rather than saying that we were right all along and there was only one possible approach.

That is all I wish to say, that I think we need much more accountability, exposure and proper debate. Yes, the WHO can make an important contribution and can be a forum for scientists, pharmaceutical companies and others who will be part of the solution should we get some future wave of infection, but please, Government, do not trust it with everything. Do not ensure that future Ministers are unable to act responsibly and well in response to public opinion and to medical opinion within our own country. Do not sell us short, because that would also sell the world short. This country has a lot to offer in these fields, and it will be best if we allow open debate, proper review and serious challenge.

 

I am no longer a lonely voice complaining about the failure of the Bank of England to keep inflation down, nor in  arguing about excessive tightening by selling bonds at big losses when they have no need to do so.

The Lords Economic Affairs Committee recently produced a good report into the problems at the Bank of England. They concluded that

1. Excess inflation in recent years was not just the result of external shocks from the Ukraine war. It reflected monetary policy errors and inadequate forecasting models.
2. The Bank did not have diverse thought around the table and ignored  excess money growth as a possible cause of inflation
3. They want documents published about the state guarantees against Bank losses, and see this has brought into question the Bank’s independence
4. The Bank’s remit including matters like climate change is too wide and should be more focused on inflation
5. The Bank needs to be subject to tougher scrutiny which should be undertaken by Parliament to ensure it is properly challenged over its models, its recruitment, it analysis and its results.

Last weekend the Telegraph ran a very critical article about the Bank, expressing the fear that current policy will bring on a needless recession. David Smith in the Times, a usual supporter and reporter of the Treasury/Bank view was also more critical and concerned that policy in the UK was detaching from the worlds of the ECB and Fed, and was too tight.

It is time the Bank listened to these valid points. They should announce they are ending their bond sales into the markets, letting the bond portfolio reduce as the bonds reach maturity and repayment. They should observe the ECB is not selling any bonds into the market, and see that the Fed is now signalling lower interest rates to come in 2024. All 3 Central banks made the same mistakes with too much money and inflation in 2020-21. The Bank of England seems to be the one that makes the reverse error more severely by encouraging a recession.

The best features of the western system are the bases in democracy, free speech and limited government. In recent years there has been a big rise in international quangos, international law, and  Treaties seeking to constrain the actions of individual nationally elected governments.  There has been a parallel move to create more and more powerful so called independent bodies within each state and the EU to do much of the work of government without reference to the elected Ministers.

These moves have often been welcomed or even designed by the elected governments themselves. Elected Ministers seemed to think if more was decided and performed by independent bodies at international or national level they would escape the blame if things went wrong. They believed that you could find a range of talented independent experts who would solve problems and manage things well. Elected Ministers would be free to travel around feeling important and taking the credit.

This is of course nonsense. It is also dangerous because it creates a growing gap between the elected party representatives and many of the electors. The quangos often get it wrong, but leave the blame to Ministers who had no power to change things short of changing the constitution of the bodies concerned and taking back control. In the UK there have been spectacular failures. We have an independent Bank of England charged with keeping inflation to 2%, presiding over a rate which soared to 11%. We have an Environment Agency and water regulator presiding over sewage dumping into rivers and threatening us with water rationing in a country which gets plenty of rain much of the time. We have an independent NHS England management charged with getting waiting lists down and given record funding, only to see the waiting lists surge. I could go on.

EU laws and quangos have destroyed most of the Social Democrat and Christian Democrat major centre left and centre right parties by associating them in office with over bureaucratic, high tax ,low growth policies for years. EU politics is defined by challenger parties emerging, sometimes taking national control, but then failing to change policy owing to EU constraints. Syriza, Vox, Forza, En Marche and others have risen and fallen in their turn.

What many of the public expect is for elected Ministers to consider expert opinion but to come to good decisions based on examination and balance of the various opinions on offer. Leaving the pandemic to pandemic scientists would  not have been a good idea, as government needed to balance the needs of the many who would not get a serious version of covid against the wish to protect the vulnerable. The whole point of having a PM or President  was to ensure priorities other than hitting covid were reflected in decisions.It is also a strange idea that there is one strand of expert opinion which is bound to be right.

I will have more to say on this in future postings.

Heat pumps are not great sellers. Many think they do not work well. Many cannot afford the high cost of adapting their homes to take them, even allowing for the taxpayer grant available to help with the costs.Some like me who would be willing to have one in my flat are told there is not one that could be fitted.

From next month gas boiler suppliers will face a tax or fine if they fail to meet certain arbitrary targets for selling heat pumps. This is a disgrace. It will mean higher prices for gas boilers for the many who still want them. It will not necessarily  sell more heat pumps.

Nor will it save the planet. On cold windless days it will take plenty of gas burned in a fossil fuel power station to work the heat pump. Plenty of the gas is wasted in generating the electricity and more energy is lost in routing the electricity to the home. Why not burn the gas in the home so more of the energy produces heat in the right place.

Governments need to let innovation and product development in the market develop products people want to buy. Electric cars are dear and not popular enough. Developing synthetic or sustainable petrol might  prove to be a cheaper and better choice.  Then they would  not need to scrap all petrol and diesel vehicles and the plants that make them.

Putting more green hydrogen or synthetics into natural gas so we can all keep  our gas boilers might be a better answer for heating. Just stop taxing and annoying us.

There are some people in need of treatment who are waiting too long. Despite the appointment of more than 200,000 extra staff since 2019, and putting in many billions more money the stated waiting lists have  risen. There are said to be 7.7 million waiting. The strikes have not helped. The NHS does need to ensure people in pain where treatment can help should get the treatment they need in a timely way.

There is also a large amount of duff data as in so much of the public sector. Talking to a recent NHS Minister I am told the rapidly rising numbers of executives and administrators have not managed to clean up the lists and produce meaningful figures.

The first problem with the waiting list figure is it includes many people who want to see a consultant to see if there is anything seriously wrong, with people awaiting test results,  with those who are awaiting treatment after tests and diagnosis, with people who have completed treatment and may or may not need a follow up appointment.

Apparently if you are after treatment you may stay on a waiting list in case you need to come back, just as you are on a waiting list whilst awaiting test results or diagnosis.You need to say you are happy  with treatment and sign off.

There are people with more than one condition who may be on the waiting list more than once, waiting additionally for a second or third possible condition. There may even be people who have died of something else whilst registered as waiting under one or other of the categories of waiting.

It would help if all those extra  administrators got the lists into better shape and told us how many different people were waiting  for diagnosis, waiting for tests and waiting for treatment. That would help in the important task of getting different waiting times down.

I have been overwhelmed by multiple over long contributions. To catch up I have just deleted some for being overlong and one of several from the same contributor.

There are some who say that the Conservatives must shift leftwards to rise in the polls. They say they must resist Conservative ideas for fear of putting off so called centrist floating voters. This  is a very old fashioned view of politics.It. certainly  does not fit the current mood.

The reason the Conservatives are low in the polls is a lot of voters who voted  Conservative in 2019 are not happy with what has happened and are sending a message to the government through pollsters. Most of them are unattracted to Starmer and Labour . Lib Dems languish on low poll ratings. Some of the former Conservatives are saying don’t  know or wont  vote to pollsters. Some say they will vote Reform, a great way to deliver a Labour government which they do not want.

I will set out in future pieces Conservative philosophy and policies the government could implement soon to reassure  voters that they understand them. Many people did not vote Conservative in 2019 to get a blue version of Labour. They wanted lower taxes, more freedoms, an independent democratic country and the greater prosperity free enterprise and wider ownership can bring. Your thoughts would be welcome.