The scandal of the unacknowledged harms from Covid vaccines shows that lessons from Primodos have still not been learned, a former Government Minister has said.
Speaking in the House of Commons debate on the ongoing Primodos scandal, Esther McVey, a Conservative MP and Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Pandemic Response and Recovery, said that the drug regulator the MHRA continues to miss the vast majority of harms from drugs and the system continues to fail the victims. Here’s a transcript of her speech.
How distressing it must be for the women and families harmed by Primodos that they are still having to fight nearly five decades on. Their road to justice has been long and cruel, and it is shameful that we (MPs) find it necessary to debate this again. How can it be that the Primodos families are still not being properly supported and compensated after all the evidence that has been presented?
Sadly, Primodos is not an isolated case, and we have seen many examples over the years of our regulatory bodies failing to keep patients safe from new medicines and medical devices. In 2013, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) listed 27 medicines that had been withdrawn on safety grounds. The average time they were on the market was 11 years. I wonder how many times we will allow history to repeat itself. There have been reports and reviews calling for reform, and back in 2004 the Health Committee undertook an inquiry into the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. It noted, of drug companies, the “closeness that has developed between regulators and companies”, which had “deprived the industry of rigorous quality control and audit”.
It also highlighted “the MHRA’s poor history in recognising drug risks, poor communication and lack of public trust”.
In 2020, Dame June Raine, the Chief Executive Officer of the MHRA, stated that her agency had transformed itself from watchdog to enabler, so I ask: has anything improved in the intervening 20 years since the Health Committee inquiry? I fear not, and I think the time has come for another inquiry of similar scope and depth, only with more robust outcomes. That is what we want — robust outcomes.
In 2020, the independent medicines and medical devices safety review, ‘First Do No Harm‘, found that Primodos, sodium valproate and pelvic mesh had all caused “avoidable harm”. The review showed that patients had been let down, and it called for significant reforms of the MHRA, due to its mishandling of safety concerns. The review was clear that there is “gross under-reporting” of suspected adverse reactions and that “systems are both too complex and too diffuse to allow early signal detection”.
That theme keeps coming up, and in a recent meeting of the APPG on pandemic response and recovery we heard from Professor Carl Heneghan, who described widespread problems with the reporting of adverse drugs and device reactions, which continue to be a major cause of hospital admissions. As many as 98 out of 100 adverse drug reactions go unreported.
The APPG, of which I am a Co-Chair, was told that the MHRA is running a system that is too slow to act and is beset by conflicts. Failure to act now will only lead to more harm. We also heard from the solicitor Peter Todd who was acting for 43 individuals who suffered blood clots as a result of the AstraZeneca vaccination. He described how the Government’s vaccine damage payment scheme is operating poorly and failing to help those who have been injured. Not only is the current system unable to protect patients from harm, but it is failing to look after those who have already been harmed.
Three years on from Baroness Cumberlege’s landmark review, the Government has not fully implemented its recommendations. In particular, we are still waiting for redress schemes to be set up to meet the costs of additional care and support for those who were harmed by Primodos, sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. Why has that not been done?
Jacob Rees-Mogg, another ex-Government Minister, also contributed to the debate, wondering why even when scandals occurred decades ago, the present Government so often seems reluctant to face up to the errors made in the past and implement the recommendations of inquiries.
The case before us seems so remarkably straightforward that it is impossible to see why there is such a stick-in-the-mud attitude from the Government, though perhaps less so from the pharmaceutical companies, because they know that they are culpable and, ultimately, deserve a financial liability. Why can I be so confident of that link? There seems to be one very striking fact, which was revealed by Jason Farrell in the important work he did for Sky News: the drug was used in South Korea and Germany as an abortifacient. It was used to procure abortions. What is a drug that will do that doing to a baby? It is causing harm. That is so straightforward. We have heard already that Primodos contained 40 times the amount of hormone in a contraceptive pill. It also contained 13 times the amount of the morning-after pill. It is so clear and self-evident that harm has been caused, and therefore responsibility must be laid at someone’s door. We know from today’s debate where those doors are.
I have great sympathy for the Minister who is to respond, because there is an extraordinary, peculiar tendency of Government — one I do not understand as a Back Bencher and did not understand in Government — to cover up the mistakes of long-since-passed Administrations. We have seen it with Hillsborough, the infected blood scandal and even with thalidomide. There is no doubt an almost endless list. I do not understand it — it is not the current Administration at fault. They have done nothing wrong; some were not even born — the Prime Minister was not — when the scandal started. Yet again and again, Governments and the bureaucracy will not open up, allow the real truth to come out and follow the evidence that was so brilliantly and clearly put by Baroness Cumberlege in her report.
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When I first saw this news I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was fake. It’s just too far out.
What it basically means is that our parliament no longer supports the presumption of innocence. Worst still, it is a willing participant in the lynching and attempted destruction of a person based on mere hearsay and unproven accusations.
I thought things were bad, but not this bad. This floors me and depresses me. I think that perhaps the feeblest of glimmers of hope within me that there might be something worthwhile left in our system has been pretty much extinguished. We are in dark, dark times.
Yes, it is depressing, especially as a lot of people will probably think it’s perfectly acceptable.
People have got so used to the government thinking for them, that they forgot they can exercise their own judgment. There will be plenty of people who find Brand’s behaviour abhorrent, even if he did not commit any criminal offence. They are perfectly within their rights to simply not watch his material, not go to his shows, etc. They do not need the government to decide this for them. If enough people dislike him, he would lose income without the assistance of the platforms or the government. If, on the other hand, enough people do like his material and wish to continue seeing it, and none of the material on any of the platforms is in itself criminal, the platforms should behave like Rumble and stay out of it.
Somebody pointed out the letter was sent by some committee, not the cabinet – irrelevant. It was sent on official letterhead and signed by an MP, precisely to imply that it was government-backed. The UK sense of fair play and respect for the law used to be held in high regard around the world – have no MPs any shame in bringing the country down to banana republic level?
Sorry to break it to you, but the UK has been a banana republic for quite some time now..
Put me in mind of Monsieur Gustave’s little soliloquy from ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ Stewart. “You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilisation left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed, that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant…….Oh fu** it!”
If you haven’t seen the film, I commend it to you most highly.
Signal and Gab too. Telegram also seem to be standing strong, though haven’t read a specific statement yet. We need more Davids to stand up against these fecking Goliaths. Any news yet on Odysee, Bitchute, Gettr etc?
https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1704599546829975641
Graham Philips British journalist, who has been branded a terrorist by the UK government, is still on Telegram.
People only realise what they’ve lost when it’s gone.
Chart your own path, seek no protection from any authority. Travel is best, it leaves you vulnerable to the kindness of total strangers.
Value individual interactions over everything.
Bit by bit we break the bastards.
“We are in dark, dark times.”
I’m lost for words.
Exactly Stewart. Simply unbelievable that a Parliamentary committee – not even Parliament itself but a small number of MPs- believe they can arbitrarily deprive someone of their living on the basis of unproven allegations. They clearly do not believe in the rule of the law they themselves are responsible for.
It takes a lot to say “we need a revolution” but the change in the balance of power unfolding since Covid mean some drastic change in governance is urgently needed.
Rumble is quite correct in its actions, and it made it clear that it didn’t expect the UK government to dictate what people can and cannot do by hearsay, convicted by a claque, the lawlessness of mob rule should be condemned not supported.
Judged and sentenced before the trial. This invokes images of the frenzied mobs hunting down heretics, witches or, in the Islamic world, anyone who shows disrespect to the prophet. It is positively medieval. We have fallen off the perch of justice, common sense, logic, reason, kindness, compassion etc and dropped into a completely different mindset. Now that the Online Safety Bill has passed, we are going to see more of this as ‘they’ round up, censor, de-platform, de-monetise all the truth tellers out there. They aim to silence us and once there are no voices speaking on our behalf, they’ll come for us, just like those well known lines that end…”Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” Well, sod them, let them try.
With you Aethelred
Good for Rumble.
Personally, I’ve no respect for Brand but he must be considered innocent until proven guilty, the basis of British law.
I run a Bible teaching channel on YouTube, but due to my views on covidism (the vaccine harms), the 2020 Presidential Election (it was stolen), they removed a number of my videos.
I took the step to mirror the whole video catalogue on Rumble. Sure, it’s not as slick as YT, but it works and they don’t mess you around.
It’ll now be an interesting litmus test for the Online Harms Bill. Will HMG fine/block?
I have done a write-up on this here:
https://glitches.substack.com/p/who-is-caroline-dinenage
Good piece by this Prof of Law on the presumption of innocence;
”When people who do not have direct evidence concerning Brand’s alleged offences make arguments that assume his guilt, the rest of us know that, since they neither witnessed anything nor heard all the evidence tested in court, they cannot possibly know for “sure” one way or the other. As a result, they reveal themselves as people who share the qualities of a state that does not maintain the presumption of innocence in its legal procedures.
And this can have certain potency. As John Stuart Mill pointed out long ago, the law and its police, courts and prisons are not the only instrument of censorship. Similarly, they are not the only way to restrict the lives of citizens. Stoking outrage, hysteria and fear in civil society can do that too. Consider how YouTube has already decided to stop Brand making any money from his channel, though none of the accusations is proved.
Second, those who imply guilt without sufficient knowledge also reveal themselves to be people who are not capable of exercising real public authority, because their commitment to the public interest cannot be trusted. They are willing to defame another person on mere suspicion that the accused might have broken the law. True, they are not claiming to represent the public in the formal way a prosecutor does. Nevertheless, they discount the possibility that the accused may have done nothing contrary to the public interest in order to grind their personal or political axe.”
https://unherd.com/2023/09/russell-brand-and-the-presumption-of-innocence/
Vote Conservative, get communism.
Vote anything nowadays and get communism, fascism, corporatism……
Shouldn’t that read “Vote for any establishment party and get ………..”? There are centre right challenger parties, independents and indeed spoiling your ballot paper is a vote against the tyranny in our midst.
Vote Tory/Labour/LibDem/Green and get Corporatism and rule by unelected supranational bodies. Corporatism, according to a quote attributed to Benito Mussolini, is the more apt term for Fascism. Corporatism: “the merger of state and corporate power.”
This is the same Conservative party and Westminster establishment that not only doesn’t want to cancel ex-terrorist murderers but wants to have them in government in the UK. Whatever way Russell Brand treated women several years ago – which he long ago admitted, was remorseful and changed his ways – I’m pretty sure it was no worse than how ex-IRA terrorists treated women, and men, and children, and without wishing to minimise Russell Brand’s treatment of women, clearly nowhere near as bad.
If Russel Brand is to be cancelled, who else, and where does it end?
Well said.
Sincerely, hats-off to Rumble for standing up for morals, instead of politics like YouTube and all the rest of the sorry crowd of cowardly mainstream news and platforms.
Let’s hear it for Rumble!
Hooray!
Seconded.
Well look what we have here;
”I see Caroline Dineage MP has been going in heavy on social media companies who publish Russell Brand’s “conspiracy theories”, trying to tell the likes of rumble what they can and can’t publish online.
Meanwhile in other news her husband is a former Deputy Commander of the Army’s 77th Brigade, the unit which tackles legitimate criticism of the British government by British citizens online, err… sorry… I mean tackles misinformation and disinformation online by bad foreign actors.
I expect it’s all just another coincidence.”
https://twitter.com/A1an_M/status/1704776579421815017
I would like to see a statement from the Culture Media and Sport committee stating whether they stand by the letter. Dame Caroline’s letter seems to be under a CMS committee letterhead/banner and she signs herself as Chair of that committee. I want to know whether all members are complicit.
I find Mr Brand’s humour and behaviour on broadcast comedy quiz shows rather unpleasant and I’ve never actually paid attention to one of his performances. Just because I dislike the guy does not mean I think he’s a criminal. At this stage all we have are allegations: Is Mr Brand as pure as Sir Cliff Richard or as evil as Jimmy Savile, or somewhere in between? Given the very serious nature of the allegations I think it should be left to the police to investigate and that other media figures and politicians should butt out and let the cops do their work.
Current CMS committee members:
Dame Caroline Dinenage MP (Chair), Conservative, Gosport
Kevin Brennan MP, Labour, Cardiff West
Steve Brine MP, Conservative, Winchester
Clive Efford MP, Labour, Eltham
Julie Elliott MP, Labour, Sunderland Central
Rt Hon Damian Green MP, Conservative, Ashford
Dr Rupa Huq MP, Labour, Ealing Central and Acton
Simon Jupp MP, Conservative, East Devon
John Nicolson MP, Scottish National Party, Ochil and South Perthshire
Jane Stevenson MP, Conservative, Wolverhampton North East
Giles Watling MP, Conservative, Clacton
If any of these are your MP you might write and ask them whether Dame Caroline’s letter was sent on their behalf and then publish the response.
Anyone have an answer as to why Huw Edwards is still receiving his full £435.000 a year salary while he is ‘suspended during further BBC enquiries’?
Why didn’t they remove his livelihood immediately?
Where were the Government letters?
likewise Gates, Clinton and the other men who were using Jeffrey Epsteins special jet and island.
Difference is they are the establishment, and they protect each other.
Is he still suspended?? I just saw him the other day, but there’s something different about him that I can’t quite put my finger on…
https://twitter.com/CartlandDavid/status/1704059185460064353
Hahaha Fab……LOL!!
Seen it Mogs. Good though.
Why hasn’t the pervert Huw Edwards been sacked?
Three cheers for Rumble. Someone needs to inform Dame Caroline its innocent until proven guilty. What if a couple of people were to accuse Dame Caroline of being Racist, or
Anti Gay, they wouldn’t need to go to the Police, just post a story on social media. Dame Caroline could deny it all she likes but in her world to be treated as she expects Russell Brand to be treated would be that she lose her position in Parliament, be removed from any social media platform, be hounded by the Press, have her entire history paraded in the media and her life and that of her close families ruined. The accusers need do nothing else, they can fade away, as would the noise surrounding her post a few months, but mud sticks.
What a truly awful person, I wonder has she thought of a life in North Korea, it seems right up her street.
Incidentally the Google owned youtube can do one I am moving to Rumble, Googles owner spent a number of years being advised by one Jeffrey Epstein, it is no organisation to be telling others what is morally correct.
All pretence that pre-2020 government has been restored is gone – not that we believed it had been anyway. This is the same dictatorship that imprisoned us all. In behaving in such a crass, sinister manner, all the DCMS will do is confirm people’s belief that it’s a political takedown. (Has anyone ever considered how sinister it is to have a ‘Department for Culture’ anyway? It used to be the Heritage Department!)
The media coverage makes a fair criminal trial impossible, assuming Russell Brand is even charged with anything. The state’s involvement on top of the media’s has killed that. The press will doubtless now go after Rumble the way they did Parler.
I suspect there will be no criminal trial. Russell Brand would bankrupt himself going civil and suing, as libel and slander cases are very expensive and hard to prove. So he’ll be in limbo: publicly accused, but denied an opportunity to defend himself. Thus he’ll be treated as a guilty man.
So far, all old TV and radio shows featuring him have already been removed from archive TV channels and streaming services (his films might go next), his management team and agents have dumped him, his tours have been cancelled, his book publisher has ditched him, politicians who appeared with him in the past have rushed to ‘apologise’ for being seen in his company. YouTube has demonetised him and I suspect they’ll kick him off sooner or later. Other social media firms might do the same.
Effectively, once the furore dies down, they want Russell Brand erased from existence. There are two warnings coming out of this. One, to Russell Brand, is: ‘Take your money, stop broadcasting things that embarrass us and disappear.’ Two, to the rest of us, is: ‘If we can do this to a high profile celebrity like Russell Brand, think what we can do to all of you!’
“Has anyone ever considered how sinister it is to have a ‘Department for Culture’ anyway?”
I have. Sinister and wasteful. Culture, Media and Sport. The extent to which the state should be involved in any of those things is highly questionable. I would start with – not involved at all. I don’t where the ideal line is in terms of what it’s sensible to get the state involved in, but I am sure we’ve gone way over it. We need to start with very little and build up again, but find ways to limit the buildup. Look at the USA, specifically at the Federal Government. The USA did not exist, it was just a bunch of states, I suppose under the umbrella of GB. The original vision for the Federal government was very limited, limited to things that would sensibly be its province like protecting external borders and regulating interstate commerce. Now look at it – constantly wanting more money and power and trying to trample on the individual state.
Yes, there’s been talk of a new convocation of states happening. The Democrats and Republicans hate each other nowadays, but by putting severe new limits on the powers of the Federal Government, both groups could effectively run their states the way they want to and offset an ‘unacceptable’ President.
The Federal Government really should only operate internally as a referee in disputes between states and externally as a voice for the country on the world stage.
Curtailing the Federal Government’s reach would mean the Dems could cope with a hypothetical President Trump and the Republicans with a hypothetical President Newsom, if neither they nor their Federal organisations have much impact on ordinary citizens’ lives.
Realistically, the citizens of a state in the USA should only need to care about who is the state Governor and who is in the state government.
Indeed, I imagine that was the original vision and while it has been severely impaired it sort of survives. They have completely free movement between states so if you hate the one you are in you can move somewhere else that is politically more to your liking – of course this breaks down if you allow mass immigration. Probably they could have allowed states to control their own borders for everyone who arrived after a certain point (I would pick some point before the Mexicans etc started arriving en masse, whenever that was).
The problem the Democrats had was staying electable once their raison d’etre – improving the lot of of working people – had been damaged by prosperity. So they favoured expanding the Federal Government and mass immigration. Of course lots of Republicans have been complicit in the idiocy too, especially the ones that are big fans of the Military and all of the myriad agencies.
Just to put it out there: I’m willing to sell out my fellow citizens for a couple of Glastonbury tickets.
“You are guilty until proven guilty, Winston. Pour encourager les autres. Say it Winston, say it!”
Wardrobe by Chanel.
Coiffure by Rats’ Helmet.
Folks – it is time now to STOP voting. Sadly, voting for the mini-parties will achieve nothing. Leave the polling booths empty at the next election.
That might have no effect – after all, in local elections, turnouts are often less than 50%, with the majority not voting at all. Perhaps you could spoil the ballot papers, as some do!
I have to agree. Voting is pointless and too often fixed.
She is a disgrace and should resign. zits this kind of thing that proves everyone was right to have concerns about the Online Harms Bill. Do not give these cretins power over anything, we have separation of powers for a reason.
Dame Caroline Dinenage, “MP who pioneered the Online Safety Bill”
Dame Caroline’s husband is Baron Mark Lancaster, who was Deputy Commander of secret intelligence 77th Brigade from June 2018 – July 2020.
The 77th Brigade during the pandemic, spied on social media posts critical of Covid vaccines. Their tweets were reported & censored. The then Head of Editorial for @X was Gordon MacMillan & like MP @Tobias_Ellwood are both members of the 77th Brigade.”
https://t.me/robinmg/30437
What happened with innocent until proven guilty?
My sincere hope is that when this stupid stupid woman falls foul of “ not aligning with her banks ideals” and has her assets taken away she will remember this moment and regret.
The people of this country have far more to fear from censorship and cancel culture than from a man who may or may not be guilty of a crime unrelated to his legitimate broadcasting. Debanking and cutting off income are the thin end of a very nasty wedge.
You know what to do Gosport. Kick her out at the next election. She doesn’t believe in innocence before proven guilty.
if someone was suspended from work whilst awaiting the outcome of an investigation – garden leave – or whatever – they would generally be paid. Why should anyone be expected to “work for free” or be denied the opportunity to earn a living / feed their family pending the investigation of an accusation – (short of being remanded in custody) ?
“pre-emptive response”
Are they really that thick or is it just part of the despair-inducing strategy?