Sir Christopher Chope
MP for Christchurch · Conservative · United Kingdom
“When was the last time that an allotted Opposition day was withdrawn in the way that the Leader of the House is withdrawing this one? I was looking at my calendar of business, otherwise known as the Order Paper, and it says that “The selection of the matters to be debated will be made by the Leader of the Opposition (Standing Order No.”
“The Climate Change Committee has condemned the Government for failing and falling short of adapting to climate change and accepting the reality as it is, which is that by the end of this century, global temperatures will have increased to between 3.5° and 4.5° above pre-industrial levels.”
“The Minister has referred to the grooming gangs inquiry carried out by our friend, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), and early-day motion 380 makes a number of recommendations. Will the Minister engage with the hon.”
“The landmark 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence by the United States takes place in the week commencing 29 June. I have applied for an Adjournment debate, but will the Leader of the House enable more Members to be able to participate in marking that historic event?”
“That is exactly what I did on behalf of my constituent Paul Kenchington: I wrote to the Secretary of State about the specialist steel that he uses, and I have not had a reply.”
“Next week, can the Leader of the House produce a Government statement in response to the Hallett review on covid-19 vaccines? Lady Hallett recommended major reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme.”
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“Why is my right hon. Friend refusing to let Members of this House see the original and revised impact assessments of his neo-socialist Renters (Reform) Bill? The independent Regulatory Policy Committee rejected the first impact assessment as not fit for purpose. Will he ensure that we see that and the second version before we debate the Bill on Second Reading?”
“Today I attended the inquest for one vaccine victim, Dr Stephen Wright, whose widow and mother heard the coroner confirm that Stephen’s death at the age of 32 was caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine. We heard earlier from the Paymaster General that the Government are very keen to hear the voices of victims. As it has now been more than six months since I have been trying to get Health Ministers to meet vaccine victims, the Paymaster General’s words do not ring very true. This is just not good enough. We owe victims such as Dr Stephen Wright and his widow and children something more than the Government are currently giving. The Government owe them respect, which they are not currently receiving.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I seek your help? What can be done to force Ministers to honour commitments made to this House at the Dispatch Box? On 24 March, during my Adjournment debate about covid-19 vaccine victims, the vaccines Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), to whom I have given notice of this point of order—promised to come to an early meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage. Despite exhaustive efforts, it has proved impossible to obtain any date from the Minister. We have offered any time, any place, but we cannot get any offer back from her or her Department.”
“Many of the people who are in fuel poverty live in park homes. Perhaps the Minister would be interested in meeting me, in my capacity as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on park homes. At a meeting of the APPG yesterday, considerable concern was expressed about the fact that the alternative funding scheme was not delivering for many park home residents because of anomalies and inflexibilities. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has written to the Minister’s Department about this, but has not yet received a response.”
“We now know that that has been pretty bad news for people, particularly the younger generation, for whom covid-19 was less of a direct threat to health. As a result of the lockdown measures, younger people have suffered disproportionately and will continue to suffer as they live the rest of their lives. Why should we want to trust the WHO absolutely?”
“The extent of concern about this issue has taken many people by surprise. It is symptomatic of people’s loss of trust in Governments and, in particular, in some of the health Departments of Governments. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton mentioned in passing that the WHO itself did a complete volte-face. They were supposedly the experts, and they brought forward a document relating to preparedness for a pandemic in November 2019. That document made no reference whatever to many of the measures that were subsequently adopted by the WHO and by Governments across the world. My right hon. Friend referred to the fact that there was no mention even of the word “lockdown”—let alone of the idea that confining people to barracks and preventing them from going about their daily lives would be good for health outcomes.”
“If we think that the only way to deal with pandemics is for all countries across the globe to unite, let us remind ourselves that, if we had our time again, many of us would have said that the Swedes got it right. In a sense, they were the outliers at the time. Under some international mandatory ruling, they would not have been allowed to experiment in the way that they did—to follow their instincts for liberty, freedom and science-based evidence before restricting people from going about their normal business. Why would we want to have a treaty that gave no flexibility to individual countries to decide what was best in their particular circumstances in any given situation? I hope that we can get an answer from the Government on that and about why they are going hell for leather to try to adopt a mandatory treaty.”
“Friend the Minister responds, I ask her to embrace the idea, which has already been discussed in the intergovernmental negotiating body—although article 19 is the most comprehensive provision of the WHO constitution under which the instrument could be adopted—that the body is open to confirming whether article 21 could also be an appropriate way of making progress on the treaty. Article 21 relates to the World Health Assembly’s powers to adopt regulations on a range of technical, health-related matters. Regulations under article 21 would come into force for all member states, except where members reject or make reservations within a specified notice period. In other words, it would be relatively more relaxed than article 19, which would effectively mean this was a mandatory treaty with no option but to comply.”
“It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), who does such important work with her APPG. At a recent meeting, we were privileged to be able to listen to Toby Green and Thomas Fazi, the joint authors of “The Covid Consensus”. I know that some of the material she used in her remarks comes from the fantastic work that those two individuals have put forward. I will start with a question: why are our Government supporting changes to the treaty based on article 19? Article 19 is the compulsion—mandatory—whereas article 21 gives the opportunity to opt in and out. Why would we wish to impose a commitment that we cannot get out of under article 19? When my right hon.”
“It is not the sort of petition that is presented to someone with a, “Will you sign that?” because in order to sign this petition, people need to apply their mind and get a pretty good understanding of the subject matter. In that respect, although the numbers are well above the minimum threshold to get a debate in this House, the quality of the petition and the arguments within it mean that it is one of the most serious petitions that we have had to debate.”
“That seems to be sheer lunacy to me. I hope that in responding to this debate my right hon. Friend will be able to agree on that point. One does not have to do anything other than point out the connections between the director general of the Gates Foundation, the Chinese Government and so on to get people to say, “Gosh. I’m a bit concerned about that.” In our daily lives, we judge companies and organisations on the basis of the people running them. If one looks at the people running the WHO, we should quite rightly ask some serious questions about their behaviour. A lot more could be said about this treaty, but I am going to finish my remarks by asking the Government to change their approach and listen to the people. This petition was signed by a large number of people.”
“I am pleased to say that in so far as we were able to, I voted against all those restrictions on freedom. I continue to believe that we made big mistakes in how we addressed the pandemic through lockdowns that were not scientifically based and in respect of which there were no proper cost-benefit analyses. But leave that on one side. The WHO is controlled by people who we would not wish to be in control of our lives. That is why both the United States and our Government are trying to break out of some of the Chinese Government’s controlling influences. But what are we doing about this situation? Why in these circumstances would a rational Government—I still believe that the Government I support are rational—engage in giving an enormous amount of power over our lives to the Chinese and Chinese-influenced and dominated organisations?”
“Nobody has to listen to it, and we can take it or leave it.” But unfortunately, the developing influence of the WHO is that it now wishes to impose its standards on the whole world. That is why people have become became alerted and signed this petition in very large numbers. They do not wish this country to give up its control over its ability to manage its own affairs when faced with an epidemic or a pandemic. They certainly do not want some body like the WHO, which is wedded to the Chinese version of authoritarian capitalism—authoritarian capitalists—telling people what they can and cannot do: saying that people cannot go about their normal business, live their lives as individuals or, as an old person, meet their relatives, and all the rest.”
“They are not covering that up; they are proud of it—indeed, they make a big thing of the fact that more than half of the WHO’s expenditure is now on vaccine programmes rather than other ways of alleviating malnutrition and health problems across the globe. Has this man—the current director general—got connections with the Bill Gates Foundation and the big funders of the WHO? Yes, he has. He was formerly a member of two of the Gates boards, Gavi and the Global Fund, so he is himself very much in with Gates—with the donors. How can he be trusted to be independent when he owes his continuing position to those donors and also to the support of the Chinese republic? We may say, “Well, so what? Let the WHO carry on as it has been for many years. It could be an advisory body.”
“He is a former Ethiopian Minister of Health. He was previously a senior figure in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Some people here today may remember that many senior members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front were also members of the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray. Mr Ghebreyesus won support from Beijing in order to become the director general of the WHO, and China has quite a large control, through him, of the WHO. Margaret Chan, a former WHO director general, said in 2012 that the WHO budget is driven by donor interests. Let us be quite open about it: the Bill Gates Foundation, big pharma and big tech are supplying a lot of the resource to the WHO.”
“My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which is a question that I was going to pose and seek to answer. One of the issues is that China has a lot to cover up. If it is not covering it up, why is it not allowing people to investigate exactly what happened at Wuhan? Why is it not co-operating with the World Health Organisation? The answer is that, in a sense, the World Health Organisation is now subservient to China. Those of us in this House who have long expressed concerns about undue Chinese influence over our lives, and over the freedom of western civilisation, need to take stock and ask ourselves who is in charge of this World Health Organisation. Some people have referred to him by what I think is one of his Christian names, Tedros Adhanom; I will refer to him by his surname, which is Ghebreyesus.”
“That is a good credential for the Government to adopt in saying, “We are not going to adopt this WHO treaty under article 19; we are going to examine it more carefully, be much more circumspect, and retain the ability of our own country and our own people to decide these important issues for ourselves.””
“I agree with my hon. Friend, as I almost always do. Prevention is better than cure. Why would we want to give up control over all these issues by signing up to this treaty? I have here a quote from Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of The Lancet . He said: “The allegation that WHO shared responsibility for the pandemic by adopting a policy of appeasement towards China has proven impossible to refute.” There we have it. The editor-in-chief of no less than The Lancet says that we need to be extremely suspicious of what is going on and what may happen.”
“Has the hon. Lady taken the point that there is a difference between article 21 and article 19? Why is she supporting article 19 as the means of introducing this measure, rather than the more flexible article 21?”
“Does my right hon. Friend believe that China is complying with the requirements to be open and transparent, sharing all its data and letting everybody know exactly how the covid-19 virus began, or does she believe that China is covering it up?”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for that response. Can he ensure that other members of the Government show similar enthusiasm for the work and achievements of the independent schooling sector? Will he take this opportunity to thank all the families who make significant financial sacrifices to pay the fees of those schools for acting in the public interest and saving taxpayers quite a lot of money?”
“How long does my right hon. Friend expect it to take for this guidance to be produced? The guidance requested last year on the draft code of practice on the recording and retention of personal data for non-crime hate incidents took more than one year to produce. Does he envisage a similarly long period? To what extent does he expect the House to have a say on the content of the guidance?”
“Finally, does my right hon. Friend envisage that the guidance should first be produced in draft form, so that there is an opportunity for people to be consulted publicly on it?”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who I know takes a great interest in this particular subject. I am delighted that she included in her remarks a reference to the fact that this legislation applies equally to men who are victims as it does to women who are victims.”
“Although that will probably still enable the person to be convicted of a public order offence, it will be a public order offence not because of their behaviour, but because of that person’s sex. It is semantics, I am prepared to concede, but that is why I introduced that amendment.”
“With the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend, I think he is conflating two dissimilar situations, because the situation he is describing is already an aggravated offence and what we are talking about here are offences that are not aggravated. Indeed, this Bill has been introduced because they are not regarded as aggravated offences and thereby qualifying for greater punishment. It is a mistake to try to equate a situation where something is already an aggravated offence with the situation described in this Bill. If a person is harassing or making remarks to somebody in the mistaken belief that they are trying to insult a woman, but it turns out that they are a man, that seems to me to be a mistake.”
“I have tried to avoid—and have done so up to now—getting into the debate about the difference between sex and gender. I will not rise to my hon. Friend’s bait to try to develop arguments around that. The Bill, commendably, is specific to sex, and it leaves out gender. I will leave it at that if that is all right with my hon. Friend. This brings me to the conclusion of my remarks. I will not say what my intentions are in relation to these amendments until I have heard from the Minister, which I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will think is a reasonable approach to take.”
“Would it not be normal to produce the draft guidance and then consult on it, rather than expecting the Government to come up with the perfect solution after they have received representations in general? I strongly urge my right hon. Friend to take the approach of having draft guidance first.”
“That was despite the Prime Minister having received notice of my right hon. and learned Friend’s question, and the fact that both he and I had raised the same points with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care weeks ago.”
“The Act was extended to apply to such vaccines before they were rolled out, but it is now abundantly clear that the Act is totally inadequate for addressing the needs of most of those who have been adversely affected. On Wednesday this week, the Prime Minister told my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright): “We are taking steps to reform vaccine damage payment schemes, by modernising the operations and providing more timely outcomes”. —[ Official Report , 22 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 330.] The Prime Minister did not answer or even refer to my right hon. and learned Friend’s requests that the Government should change the £120,000 maximum payment for those seriously injured and end the denial of any payment to those disabled by less than 60%.”
“I welcome to the Front Bench the Minister who will respond to the debate, with whom I had a meeting earlier today. During the course of that meeting, she kindly agreed to come to an early meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage, which I have the privilege of chairing. At that meeting we will have representatives of victims of vaccine damage. However, as I emphasised to my hon. Friend, we will not have people there who are actively engaged in litigation, because that would be inappropriate. This debate is about the application of the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 to those who have been bereaved or suffered adverse reactions to covid-19 vaccines.”
“How many people are now working on vaccine claims, and does she see any prospect of the enormous backlog being reduced quickly? There are lots of questions there, but they are only a small sample of those that I have. I look forward to members of the APPG raising further questions with the Minister when she comes to our meeting.”
“Will she also reconsider the amount of the £120,000 payment? Its value has been eroded by inflation since 2007. Can she explain why there are still no plans to align the disablement threshold for the VDPS with that in the England infected blood support scheme, under which it is possible to get £100,000 without any evidence of disability? There does not seem to be any alignment between that scheme and the VDPS. The Government said that within 56 days of receiving any prevention of future deaths report from a coroner, they would report back on it. The only such report made to the Government relating to this issue was delivered on 13 October. Will my hon. Friend explain why there has still not been a response? In the light of what is happening in Germany, will she agree to set up specialist clinics to look at post-vaccine situations?”
“It will not be possible for people to follow all of the questions I want to ask, because I do not have time to read out all of them. Are the Government aware of the 2017 case in the Court of Appeal where the Court said that, for VDPS purposes, loss of faculties had no real relationship to the kind of injuries set out in schedule 2 of the relevant statute relating to calculating the percentage of disablement? Schedule 2 calculates physical disability—for example, an amputation below the knee could be calculated at 60%. The Court decision was that that should not be some kind of straitjacket, but it seems that it is being used as a kind of straitjacket in the assessment of covid vaccine claims. Will the Minister confirm that the Government are following the decision made by the Court of Appeal?”
“Now we have a situation in which the German Federal Minister of Health is saying, “let’s see if we can get some help from the pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily help compensate those harmed by the vaccines.” He then goes on to say that that is because the profits have been “exorbitant”. Just a year ago, he had said that the pharmaceutical companies would not get rich on the vaccines, but it is one of the privileges of Ministers across the world to be able to eat their words when the facts change. In my submission, the Government here need to completely change their approach and become much more realistic, accommodating and, dare one say it, compassionate towards those who did the right thing by the public interest and accepted the vaccines. May I ask my hon. Friend a whole series of questions?”
“What has happened over the past two years in Germany is that more than 300,000 cases of vaccine side-effects have accumulated in the Ministry’s own system, and more and more people are lodging compensation claims against the state, which, based on the contracts that Germany signed with the EU manufacturers, is liable for any vaccine-related damage. Meanwhile, the subject of vaccine injuries has begun to be openly discussed in the German mainstream media. Let us hope that we will see a bit of that developing in our own country, because one of the frustrations of the victims of these vaccines is that there seems to be much reluctance in the mainstream media to engage on this issue.”
“I have asked them whether they would report on what has been happening in University Hospital Marburg in Germany, where much work is being done on the diagnosis and treatment of post-vaccination syndrome. I suggested that it might be useful for them to have some discussions with the hospital. In answer to a parliamentary written question on 16 November—UIN 88798—I was told that there are “no current plans to do so.” I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to reconsider that position, because it is important that we should get into alignment with Germany, whose health system is much more successful than our own. Germany has moved from wanting to get everybody vaccinated, although that was all done “voluntarily”, to recognising now that it must do its best to look after those for whom the vaccine was bad news.”
“That is disarmingly frank, is it not? He conceded that one in 10,000 of those vaccinated against covid-19 in Germany had experienced severe adverse effects. He described these “unfortunate cases” as heartbreaking, confirming that some of the severe disablements will be permanent. He added, “It’s really tragic”. The Minister said that Germany does not yet have drugs for treatment and that care entitlements are defined very narrowly, but he recognised the need to get faster at recognising vaccine injuries as the understanding of adverse events increases. He promised significant extra resources and said that he was in discussions with German Treasury Ministers to address issues around post-vaccine syndrome. Sadly, our own Government do not even recognise post-vaccine syndrome.”
“I shall now try to shame the Government into action by contrasting their head-in-the-sand approach to vaccine damage victims with what is happening in Germany. On 12 March, Professor Dr Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s Federal Minister for Health, gave a disarmingly candid interview to the Germany TV news channel ZDF. The Minister is a scientist and physician of note, and had previously been professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne and at Harvard. As the adviser to then Chancellor Angela Merkel at the beginning of the covid pandemic, he took a very hard line and publicly said on numerous occasions that the vaccines must be taken and that they were “without side effects”. He has now admitted in that interview that what he said about them being “without side effects” was a gross exaggeration.”
“The Express , the first mainstream newspaper to start giving the issue some publicity, began its crusade for justice for jab victims with four pages in one of its editions last week. On 15 March, its leading article, entitled “Injection of faith needed”, spoke for many when it said: “We must take care of the small number of people who suffered side effects as a result of their jabs. Innocent people who have suffered terribly must not be denied the damages they deserve. This is a matter of justice.” The current situation is that over 4,000 claims have been made under the 1979 Act. Over the past five months, new claims have been running at the rate of 250 per month. Some 2,800 claims remain outstanding, and only a surprisingly and disturbingly small number have so far been successful.”
“I have been unable to receive any disability benefits and have been left to use my entire life savings to fund my food and bills.” An expert rheumatologist has now confirmed the link between my constituent’s symptoms and the Pfizer vaccine. My constituent asks me—and I, in turn, ask the Minister—will the Government admit that there are cases where these vaccines have caused reactions in people? Will they promise to provide further support and research funding for how these conditions can be managed and, hopefully, resolved? My constituent is but one of so many who have suffered, and continue to suffer, because they did the right thing, on the advice of the Government, and received their jabs.”
“I have received hundreds of distressing letters and emails from both victims and bereaved relatives, who are desperate for the Government and the NHS to listen. Several are from my own constituency. I will quote briefly from one letter, received on 18 March, from a 24-year-old, previously employed in a good job in financial services. He had a Pfizer vaccine booster in February 2022 and says: “Within days of the dose, I started experiencing nasty symptoms that resembled those of an autoimmune disease. The symptoms include nausea, headaches, skin rashes and other immune issues. Despite numerous Doctors visits, blood tests, X-rays and medicinal prescriptions, Doctors have been unable to help ease symptoms at all. Symptoms have worsened with time and I have been unable to work over the past seven months or so.”
“Was it not bizarre that all the Prime Minister could say on Wednesday, when told about Jamie Scott spending four weeks in a coma and remaining seriously disabled as a result of a covid vaccine, was: “I am very sorry to hear about the case”? Then, in an extraordinary non sequitur, the Prime Minister added: “In the extremely rare case of a potential injury from a vaccine covered by the scheme, a one-off payment can be awarded.” —[ Official Report , 22 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 330.] However, Jamie Scott’s injury is not a potential injury, but a real and substantial one. Nor was it caused by any old vaccine; it was caused by a new experimental covid vaccine. Sadly, Jamie Scott’s case is not unique.”
“She declined to answer the question at the meeting and said that she would write to me. She did not do so, so I then had to put down a parliamentary written question—UIN 2325. She ducked that question. I will therefore ask the same question again to the Minister today, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), bearing in mind that we now know that more than 50 coroners’ verdicts have confirmed that people have died as a direct result of covid-19 vaccines, and that her Department has been making awards under the 1979 Act to families who have been bereaved on the basis that their loved ones died as a direct result. Will the Government therefore unequivocally say today that they do accept that some people have died as a direct result of having received a covid-19 vaccination?”
“This month, we have already discussed in this House the scandal surrounding the supply of contaminated blood and the false imprisonment of postmasters as a result of the Horizon system. In both cases, after long resistance, the Government were eventually forced into accepting compensation schemes. If they are interested in tackling the developing scandal over covid-19 vaccine damage victims, they can and must act now. I fear, however, that the Government have no will so to do, because they are still in denial about the whole issue. Why do I use that expression? I do so because at a meeting on 21 April last year, I asked the then vaccines Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), whether she accepted that some people had died as a direct result of having received the covid-19 vaccination.”
“I did notice that document, because it was drawn to my attention by my hon. Friend. May I suggest to him that he tries to engage the good offices of our right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who is the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee? I am delighted to see him in his place this afternoon, because I know that this issue is close to his heart as well. The Minister confirmed to me earlier that the Government’s answer to both those questions that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam put to the Prime Minister is no. It is rather sad that that is so, and it is regrettable that the Prime Minister did not put that on the record himself.”
“As I understand it, the Minister’s time will be up at eight minutes past 3, so can she now explain whether the Government will accept that post-vaccine syndrome is clinically recognised? Will she divert resources specifically to that issue?”
“My hon. Friend refers to long covid clinics, but people who are suffering from the consequences of vaccine damage feel that they are being treated differentially and in an inferior way. If we have clinics for long covid, why do we not have clinics for post-vaccine syndrome?”
“Friend take into account that there are now two precedents in recent times when the Session went on much longer—in this case we are talking about six months—than was originally scheduled? In one case there were 18 sitting Fridays—in other words, an additional five—and on the other occasion there were an additional four sitting Fridays. Will she ask the Procedure Committee to advise the House on how to take this matter forward?”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, you and the Leader of the House will know that tomorrow is the 13th and final day scheduled for debate of private Members’ Bills in this Session. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will join me in paying tribute to the Comptroller of His Majesty’s Household, our hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris)—and, indeed, those on the Opposition Front Bench—for facilitating in this Session the passage of, I think, a record number of Bills to the other place. In the absence of any further sitting Fridays, can my right hon. Friend explain what will happen if any of those Bills that have gone to the other place are amended? How will we be able to deal with those amendments in this place without any further sitting Fridays? Will my right hon.”