Graham Stringer

I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on securing this debate. One of the surprising things, given how many people died during the covid epidemic, as well as the cost of approximately £400 billion and the cost of the inquiry heading northwards to £1 billion, is how little debate there has been in Westminster Hall and on the Floor of the House. I want to use the opportunity of this debate on the fourth part of the inquiry not just to point out the lack of debate so far, but to use recommendation 1 to highlight a number of things. Recommendation 1 and the Government’s response both draw attention to how the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies behaved during covid. The response says uncritically that it gave “co-ordinated scientific and technical advice”. Well, yes—to a point. But on 11 February 2020, SAGE had before it a report from Imperial College, based on Chinese statistics, showing a very strong relationship between age and mortality among people who caught covid. Basically, children were not at risk and people over 70 were at serious risk. SAGE did not discuss that at that meeting, even though the paper was there. Had it done so, it might well have come forward with different policies to keep children in school and to protect the most vulnerable people, rather than having a blanket policy that said, “Protect the NHS.” It is not our job to protect the NHS; it is the NHS’s job to protect us. Actually, I always read protecting the NHS as protecting the Government, because they were frightened of having people on trolleys in corridors. I think that was a mistake. The information was there and could have been used. The heroine of this episode, mentioned in the report, is Kate Bingham, who ran the vaccine taskforce. Because of her expertise in both science and funding, she was primarily responsible for getting the vaccine out more quickly than anywhere else. Given that she was so successful in doing that, we should have listened to what she said when she spoke to the Science and Technology Committee, the Health Committee and the inquiry. She was excoriating about the Government’s response. She talked about institutional blockages and “warfare” between the Business Department and the Health Department. She did not recommend what the report proposes—a pharmaceutical expert advisory panel, which does not seem to have very many powers. She wanted to protect and develop our vaccine manufacturing ability and our science ability. What did we get? The sale of the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, and nothing else.