The UK Covid Inquiry started its Module 4 oral hearings about vaccines and therapeutics on January 14th 2025. Matt Hancock appeared on January 16th. He basically got off scot-free. There is a long list of hugely important questions which were not asked, either by Hugo Keith KC for the inquiry or by any of the KCs acting for the core participants.
The Perseus Group, which I represent, helpfully included a list of questions at the end of its written evidence to the inquiry covering both the Covid vaccines and medicine regulation in general. Judging by the lack of searching questions in Module 4 so far, they have either not read our evidence or are ignoring it.
So I want to highlight a few of our questions here in the faint hope that the other witnesses, notably MHRA, will not also be given a ‘Hancock-style’ easy ride when they appear before the Inquiry over the next two weeks.
Process 1 vs Process 2
When Hancock gave evidence, I was shouting at the screen, urging someone to ask him if he knew that the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna Covid vaccines which were approved for roll-out to the public (using manufacturing Process 2) were different to those used in the clinical trials (manufacturing Process 1) and that there was no safety evidence bridging the two. If you don’t believe me, read paragraphs 32-35 of our written evidence, which are based entirely on MHRA’s replies to FOIs, and my article about the issue in September 2023.
To be clear, the question is not whether MHRA was aware (it obviously was); rather, the question is did Ministers know about it prior to authorisation? If they didn’t know (and Hancock doesn’t mention it in his written evidence), alarm bells should be ringing about MHRA and the UK Vaccine Task Force (which would also have been aware about the issues associated with scaling up production); and if Ministers did know, what were they told and did they question MHRA about the safety implications, and why were neither Ministers nor MHRA transparent with the public about the issue?
To be clear, Hancock might say it was MHRA which approved the vaccines, but it was actually Lord Bethell, one of his Ministers, who signed them off even though Hancock was the Licensing Authority, accountable to Parliament under the Human Medicine Regulations.
One can only hope that the inquiry KC or core participants KCs ask MHRA and Kate Bingham about this – not just about who knew what and when, but also about the consequential safety concerns relating to RNA integrity, DNA contamination and batch inconsistency (paras 36-44 of our written evidence).
Evidence to support Covid vaccination of children
Hancock should also have been asked what changed after the public statements by him and Kate Bingham, head of the UK Vaccine Task Force in autumn 2020, that this was an “adult vaccine” because children were at negligible risk from COVID-19.
Indeed, there was also a complete lack of long term safety data, and the evidence about the effect on transmission was flimsy at best. See paragraphs 46-51 and 121 of our written evidence for details. One can only hope that the inquiry KC or core participants’ KCs ask MHRA, Kate Bingham, Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer) and Jenny Harries (UK Health Security Agency) about this policy ‘U-turn’ when they give their oral evidence.
The next two questions are about medicine regulation in general. I’m covering these because a) the inquiry seems so keen to focus on ‘systems and processes’ and not so much about the safety of the Covid vaccines, and b) if the inquiry is going to come up with recommendations, shouldn’t it be testing these on witnesses? So, for example:
Threshold of Safety
Why does MHRA not define a threshold of safety or the balance between benefit and risk which would lead to the withdrawal of any medicine? In all other safety-critical sectors there is a clear, documented process for assessing the absolute safety risk and tolerability of harms from use of products, and use of the ALARP principle – reducing safety risks to ‘As Low As Reasonably Practicable’. Not so in MHRA. As a result, its safety management system allows collateral damage in pursuit of benefits which are often overstated by manufacturers (particularly for new products) and poorly monitored by MHRA. See paragraphs 101-110 of our written evidence.
Independent safety audit
Unlike all other safety critical sectors, MHRA is not subject to independent safety audit (paragraph 111 of our written evidence). Why does MHRA rely on Quality Audit by the British Standards Institute instead? The two are very different: quality audit is about compliance with business processes; safety audit is primarily about the extent of products’ risks and harms. A good example to highlight the difference is that a Quality Audit would not question MHRA about the safety risks associated with having no process describing how it follows up individual Yellow Card reports (even just the fatal and serious ones) and no process for assessing causation (except in clinical trials). A safety audit would do that.
I also want to get one thing off my chest. There are growing calls for Yellow Card reporting to be made mandatory. I met the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) in September 2024 and she is pushing for it. I can well see the inquiry including this as a recommendation in its report. However, as I told the PSC, this won’t solve any problems in my opinion (as someone who worked for years in another safety critical sector). First, as noted above, MHRA doesn’t even investigate all of the fatal and serious Yellow Card reports it already gets. Secondly, side-effects with a temporal delay (i.e., unless you drop dead within five minutes) will tend to remain unsuspected and therefore unreported. Indeed, MHRA already has a tendency to write-off Yellow Cards as coincidental even where there is little or no temporal delay.
Finally, to end on an upbeat note, I was heartened by the debate led by Esther McVey in the House of Commons on January 16th about the MHRA. One after another, MPs stood up and spoke to MHRA’s failures in regulation of a wide range of medicines and medical devices. We certainly haven’t heard the last of that. I would simply note that the Perseus Group’s evidence is as pertinent to that as it is to the Covid Inquiry. I would urge MPs to read our evidence and ask questions. I shall certainly be pressing my own MP, Dr Simon Opher, to do exactly that. And we stand ready to present and discuss our evidence to the various All-Party Parliamentary Groups with interests involving the MHRA.
Until Nick retired a few years ago, he was a Senior Civil Servant in the Ministry of Defence responsible for the safety and effectiveness of ammunition used by the Armed Forces. He is co-author of the Perseus Group report on U.K. medicines regulator the MHRA.
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If they had Dr Dave Martin at the inquiry, it would be like a box of kryptonite going off, that’s why they’d never have him. We know how uninterested they were when Gove mentioned a potential bioweapon. MHRA are 86% captured by Big Pharma so what did you expect.
I have just been reading about a very open and wide-ranging podcast from Andrew Bridgen (https://expose-news.com/2025/01/20/andrew-bridgen-crimes-against-humanity/), and he heard that Hancock had applied for a job at the United Nations (“UN”), which offers immunity from prosecution and diplomatic immunity, making it an attractive option for those who may be held accountable for their actions. Hancock didn’t get the job. But that’s why they all apply for jobs at the UN.
Concerning the MHRA, he also reported The medicine’s healthcare product regulatory agency in the UK is 86% funded by Big Pharma, the same industry it is supposed to regulate. “So, you’ve got regulatory capture”.
“In all other safety-critical sectors there is a clear, documented process for assessing the absolute safety risk and tolerability of harms from use of products, and use of the ALARP principle – reducing safety risks to ‘As Low As Reasonably Practicable’.”
I am not sure I agree with this.
Nuclear safety levels are far more stringent than reasonably necessary. As a result we are not able to build nuclear generating stations economically and quickly. This excessive caution is itself damaging.
The question therefore arises: why are some activities subject to ridiculous caution whereas others are permitted when great risks are clear and not addressed.
Because lawmakers (i.e. MPs) are not very smart and/or corrupt?
The former.
I’m glad you mentioned ALARP under the “Threshold of Safety”. I’m familiar with it after a few decades in that field in the railway industry. The other related concept (that appears to be alien in pharmacology) is the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) applicable to any functional system. All concerned might benefit from looking up that term. There is a lot of information available via that route, including standards IEC 61506 & 61511.
Of course, while there is often a different balance of risk versus benefit when one is seriously ill for whatever reason, there was a lot of dodgy marketing to normal people with no honest or accurate communication on this issue.
Looking on the bright side, an hour or so ago I heard President Trump say that he is going to order the US military to shell out cash damages to those who were expelled from the forces by refusing the jabs; more to come across the pond, perhaps.
No bridging studies, no long-term safety studies in children, no risk-benefit analysis, no independent safety audit.
And in the background at the time, a Prime Minister screeching, “Get Boosted!”
Time to bypass Her Ladyship’s charade and go straight to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
Are you serious take a look at her. She would stabbinate you quicker than a jackrabbit bound for nookie. They all piss in the same pot and they all want us dead it really is that simple.
Never forgive, never forget.
I enjoyed my life even during “covid” and continue to do so, but I have not and will not “move on” from being profoundly angry about the “vaccines” and every other aspect of it.
Hear hear
Her face pisses me off.
She reminds of an irrational headmistress I had the misfortune to be acquainted with whilst a pupil in junior school. She spent most of her time in Bosnia busily signalling virtue, but when she was in the country and in the building I used to do a U-turn and go down the other corridor if I saw her and her hot pink shell suit flouncing and bouncing my way.
Yes, she was fat, too.
Re: ALARP and Threshold of Safety. A canine vaccine was stopped after 10 dogs died – yes just TEN. Still everyone loves a dog but it seems people less so.
It appeared to me from a work perspective that those who complied and had all the vaccines and boosters claimed they got covid and were off sick multiple times. But I, who only had the first vaccine because it made me ill, never got it. But then I still maintain I had it after a visit to London in late 2019 to watch a recording of Friday night is music night with Jimmy Somerville at the Colliseum followed by a walk round Chinatown. Never was there such a cough
If so many relevant questions go unasked / unanswered then it means the inquiry is a waste of time and money
I agree, and have said so for several months.
The “Inquiry” is staged to exonerate all the Guilty Men and Women. Of course no difficult questions are being asked of Handcock, or anyone else.
Its been a charade since it got started. No surprises here. I cant bring myself to read properly anything relating to this enquiry. I am sick to death of the blatant effrontery of the entire farce.
The inquiry is unlikely to come to any conclusion that would be detrimental to the government’s investments in vaccine factories
“Judging by the lack of searching questions in Module 4 so far, they have either not read our evidence or are ignoring it.”
I too submitted written evidence, which was “carefully considered”, but I was not called in person and as a consequence my evidence does not appear on the Inquiry website, which only puts up contributions from those who attended. But can you expect lawyers, who appear to have no proper clinical advisors, to adjudicate on what is important and what isn’t? I have even offered my personal services and attempted to consult informally, but to no avail.
The key facts have been outlined many times; you don’t need to vaccinate against a largely non-lethal organism, but treat the small number who get seriously sick; you can expect a vaccine to provoke the same side-effects as the infection especially if you are making the body produce quantities (variable and of unknown duration) of the provoking antigen; previously agreed assessment and trial protocols were thrown out of the window; secrecy in the decision-making processes was present from the outset, and still continues; and evidence from true experts has been ignored with the messengers being labelled as vaccine deniers who will cause deaths. The vaccines are neither safe nor effective; the side-effect profiles have taken a while to emerge but are significant (one might argue that relatively rare side-effects require a large population of exposed people for this to become evident); and they do not stop you getting infected. Indeed how could they?
Like lawyers, politicians can have no serious grasp of clinical medicine. But they were being advised by doctors. So we need to know why the advising doctors were inadequate. Certainly those whose names come up, including some of the current witnesses, are people with limited or no clinical competence. If that is the reason why things went wrong we also need to know why appropriate clinicians were not involved.
As a (retired) rheumatologist I came very quickly to the conclusion that the major cause of serious illness was immunologically based – rheumatologists spend a lot of time dealing with immune disease. I drafted a comprehensive management schedule which, had it been implemented in May 2020 when I submitted it, would have saved in my estimation 20,000 lives. I offered my services as an unofficial advisor. I never had any response. Thus it has been galling in the extreme to find that most of my submission was correct. So I would like the Inquiry to inquire why my carefully considered, clinically based, expert knowledge was simply ignored.
I am still working on my book, which is a full diary of contemporary events and thoughts. Maybe later this year…
To get answers, you have to be asking the right questions.
This inquiry (whitewash) has no interest in the right questions being asked, that is not its purpose.
Its purpose would appear to be to protect the guilty and vilify (or ignore) those looking for answers and daring to ask awkward questions.
Surely we all knew this so called enquiry would be another whitewash. Hancock should be in prison for his corruption over PPE deals and his incompetent handling of the Covid problems. Health secretaries should have some medical knowledge. Its a puzzle to me how an idiot like him should have been in any management position in government specially one responsible for the nation’s health.