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 In 2013, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) listed 27 medicines that had been withdrawn on safety grounds.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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Let’s hope others follow her example. A Labour MP on World at One today was complaining that many of his constituents were having to use food banks and could not afford to pay more tax. As that is true we should not be handing over any money to foreign governments.
When Starmer told VP Vance that we have had free speech in the UK for a long time, I waited in vain for someone to ask Starmer if that was compatible with the very new concept of Non Crime Hate Incidents and if so, how?
I know the supine journalists failed to hold Starmer to account but I guess pissing off guests might not get them invited back.
When your own people are well cared for and happy, you can consider helping other countries if you have a surplus.
We borrow to give to others, and our own people suffer, just insane.
I assume that She, of the wild hair, will be persuading 40% of the Civil Service staff in that Ministry to leave as I presume they will be unnecessary.
The free speech remark by Starmer is a bit rich with Mr T Robinson in solitary confinement.
Also in the Telegraph from Stephen Pollard: “Good riddance to Anneliese Dodds, the minister without sense…”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2025/02/28/good-riddance-to-anneliese-dodds-the-invisible-minister/
“…In a Government of non-entities, Dodds was perhaps the most invisible of all. It is perhaps unfair to pose of Anneliese Dodds’ resignation the oft-cited philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
And a commenter adds, “It’s people like Dodds that give non-entities a bad name.”
Starmer is far right!
The Left will eat itself.
Only the plant-based left. Otherwise, they’d have to stop calling themselves vegan.
That was the most half hearted resignation I have ever seen. As International Development Minister it was down to her her to fall on her sword to placate the far left. She will be back in a top job before you know it. That International Man of Misery, Kier Starmer will find all the money for their stupid overseas spending projects from other departments, probably in a circular route back from defence.
“International Man of Misery” love it!
So will her trough money fall?
“Ultimately, these cuts will remove food and healthcare from desperate people…”
How perceptive of Ms Dodds. She wouldn’t by any chance be referring to the people of the UK by any chance would she?
Oh, silly me.
Who?
Astonishing to think that this idiot was Shadow Chancellor before Rachel from Accounts.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-weekly-roundup/
Here’s £100 billion of savings identified.
Paul Homewood at TCW.
And another £22bn in the pipeline for wholly pointless carbon capture.
Brief summary:
“Dear 2TK, I am really upset that I am being forced to take my snout out of this lovely trough. Why me, when I know you all still have your own? It’s just not fair”.
Yours Ms Gummidge
Could be the start of something beautiful. Perhaps the neocon rats all over the West will leave their sinking ship of their own volition. More or less the entire British political class is neocon including the dissident parties. Probably more likely that the Brits will try to go it alone as they do seem to like playing last man standing. It is a disgusting position, being the head of the ministry of regime change.
Frederick Edward rightly exposing Bozo for the despicable mass murderer that he is. This utterly corrupt piece of shytr is as Frederick Edward blodly states
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-unflushable-boris-johnson/
“Given his track record – with the blood of thousands on his hands – together with his central role in covid and his obsession with the civilisation-ending perversity of Net Zero, one can only wish that Boris Johnson would crawl into the nearest foxhole and never return.
As one of the unflushables, however, there is no doubt that he will keep coming back.”
A better idea would be to cut the so-called foreign aid budget by 100%. If people living in the UK want to support charitable causes in foreign countries, they can always contribute money voluntarily. We’re presently at the point where recipients of so-called foreign aid claim they’re owed ‘reparations’ for taking it. So, let’s take this burden away from them.
Utterly agree. Splot the saving between defence and care for the old. £8 billion for defence and £8 billion for Elderly Care, should make a big dent in that problem.
DOGE the rest of the civil service budgets, too.
Down with this state!
And for a more comical yet equally eviscerating look at the Uniparty’s attempts to ensure that thousands more lives are lost in Ukraine here’s John Ellwood at his best…
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/your-bunter-needs-you/
“The KemiKorps: Not wishing to miss the show and inspired by the impressive tactics of Rommel’s Afrika Korps in World War Two, the Tory leader hopes to boost the flagging fortunes of her once-great party by forming a fighting force of young men from her ancestral home, West Africa. Because of her party’s immigration policies there are tens of thousands of Nigerians, Ghanaians etc in the UK who are available to volunteer.”
I’m sure our new arrivals cannot wait to prove their allegiance to their new homeland especially with the new leader of the KemiKorps.
What an unbelievably stupid woman.
Having risen without trace, the only time she makes the headlines is when she flounced out in a huff.
She so obviously hates the British people…
I’m sure she will be sadly missed.
Oh, how she will be missed. Having identified a pressing need for aid I am sure she will resign nd go overseas to some god foresaken place to assist.
Or not.
It is sad for the Brits who don’t go along with the agenda and feel temperamentally opposed to it. Russia has said that it is happy to take western refugees from neoliberalism. There was a secret clause in that 100 year agreement and pledge from Starmer to Ukraine which involved mineral rights. At that point in time it was the perfect opportunity to pre-empt Trump. The deal included complete British control over the Black Sea ports. That is why the British media went crazy when Trump suggested that Zelensky might be a dictator.
Good riddance to another evil,
Communist feminist who thinks foreign men are more in need of our taxes than out own men and women.
Nasty, middle class A-hole
And who is such a traitress that she would put our people’s defence behind aid to lazy, workshy foreigners.
They do love to eat themselves don’t they?
Read the Futurist manifesto if you want to understand where women like this one are going to end up. It is a beautiful document and a huge influence on the German national socialists. On a spiritual level the Trump movement is essentially an antidote to the horror of the sacrifice carried out in broad daylight in November 1963 on a Friday morning. The plotters hoped that it would lead into terminal decline of America and the age of the Antichrist. But in a sense the opposite has happened given just how much this event opened minds to everything else. There are deep spiritual links between Trump and Kennedy.
I’m praying for Almighty God to divide Starmer’s house, for a house divided cannot stand.
This is the beginning.
We do need to beg for direct intervention. Even if he just creates a new enclave in the desert and calls it New England. With taverns and bawdy houses. Perhaps in such an environment the best will wake up. I suggest that we approach the American embassy within the next few weeks and try to come to some sort of arrangement. Because the reality of staying here is simply too grim to contemplate.
Who she ?
Cares only for people in far away places, while voting to impoverish the old and needy here. As she has failed to instigate audits on the money she’s happily sending to these places, how much of it does she think reaches its intended target.?
She’s no great loss…
Nil desperandum. It is rumoured the role might be filled with a v close friend of 2TK, who can share those long, lonely journies to foreign parts together.
The inability for these inept politicians to see around the next corner and assess the consequences is quite staggeringly stupid.
If these politicians want to really see what has gone wrong with governance in Western countries, then need just look in a mirror and stop pointing fingers elsewhere.
Maybe they should be made to prove where that £13 billion Foreign Aid goes to, probably not much goes to those who need it, or should receive it.
Someone once quoted that Foreign Aid is where you take money from the poor people of a Rich country (taxpayers) and give it to the rich people of a poor country – might have been Ron Paul.
They can always find a school they’ve built somewhere, and maybe a hospital – but what these poor countries need are debt forgiveness and access to cheap reliable energy.
Those would be a start!
I understand some Foreign Aid is used to grease the palms of certain people to facilitate trade deals and overseas orders, but like USAID, lets have a full audit.
Dodds and co are peas in the same pod. Left and woke. High tax and anti white. Open borders and endless wastage on illegals. Good riddance. 500+ more to go.
Dear Anneliese
Greed is the belief you are entitled to other people’s money to use for your own purposes.
With respect to your greedy self, you believe you can take my money without my consent using the coercive powers of the State, to disperse in foreign aid to people I don’t know, or I don’t care about, or I don’t like so that you can feel warm and fuzzy about being caring and compassionate.
It’s easy to be generous with other people’s money, innate in Socialists, but if you care so much for others, use your own, and now you have gone, don’t come back.
Your ever!
A Taxpayer.