Britain has just weeks to escape new powers allowing the World Health Organisation to recommend imposing lockdowns in future pandemics, a group of MPs and peers has warned. The Telegraph has more.
The UK must opt out of the WHO’s new international health regulations (IHRs) by July 19th to avoid the body co-ordinating the response to any future Covid-style pandemic.
In a letter to the Foreign Office, 14 leading Parliamentarians urge the Government to exercise Britain’s right to ignore amendments to the regulations before the looming deadline.
The IHRs were drawn up by member states of the WHO in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, and increase the organisation’s powers to co-ordinate future global responses to pandemics.
But critics have warned they give too much power to the WHO and risk undermining individual countries’ right to manage their own affairs.
The regulations say WHO member states must “support WHO-coordinated response activities”, which critics argue could amount to an obligation to support the body’s recommendation to lock down in a future pandemic.
A Government spokesman told the Telegraph “no decision” had yet been made on which of the amendments were in the “national interest”.
Writing for the Telegraph, Suella Braverman, a former home secretary, warned that the regulations “present the most serious threat to national sovereignty in a generation”.
She wrote: “What the British public sees – what they intuit – is not just bureaucratic overreach but a creeping usurpation of their democratic rights. They voted to leave the European Union precisely because they were tired of decisions being made by people they could not name and could not remove. The WHO, as it currently stands, is another iteration of the same problem.”
A WHO spokesman said the body “does not have the right or ability to take any decision concerning health within a sovereign state,” adding: “Such authority will and always remain with the countries themselves.
“These recommendations are always based on advice provided by an emergency committee of international experts, and information provided by countries. The goal is to prevent or reduce the international spread of disease and avoid unnecessary interference with international trade and travel.”
Ms Braverman is joined in the letter by the Conservative MPs Danny Kruger, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Esther McVey and Jack Rankin. Labour’s Graham Stringer, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson, and the former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe have also signed it alongside Lord Frost, the Tory peer and former chief Brexit negotiator.
They warn that it would be “premature and pre-emptive” for the UK to agree to new pandemic-related regulations before the conclusion of the Covid Inquiry, which is ongoing.
They also argue that “serious doubts” have been raised about the legality of the WHO’s process for updating the IHRs, and warn that the package could “amount to a breach of international law”.
The WHO said it had fulfilled all legal requirements in the ratification process for the IHRs, including consulting the UK Government.
The US has already opted out of the IHRs by withdrawing completely from the WHO in the first days of the second Donald Trump administration.
“The executive order withdrawing the USA cited serious concerns, including in relation to the poor performance of the WHO and its leadership during the pandemic, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from inappropriate political influence,” the Parliamentarians’ letter said.
While earlier proposed amendments to the IHRs suggested that the WHO could have the power to impose public health measures on member states, the latest version only gives it the ability to recommend an approach.
Worth reading in full.
Dr Meryl Nass says she is “relieved” that “all the controversial ideas have been kicked down the road” and there is “nothing binding” that will be a problem:
- This version of the treaty does not commit any nation to doing anything it does not want to do.
- Nor does it promise nations anything of value: no privileges or benefits.
- You might be lucky and get some free or cheap vaccine or drugs if manufacturers agree in future to give them away.
- All the controversial areas have been kicked down the road.
- There is nothing binding in this document that is a problem for nations.
If this was the level of agreement at 3.5 years, we can assume they won’t get much further over the next few years. The US and Argentina will be out. I imagine all the nations will approve this document, since it is virtually meaningless, only providing a skeleton — which the globalists hope can be dressed up later with the awful provisions. But since the globalists just had their biggest funding stream turned off (USAID) they made no obvious attempt to use bribery to gain agreement on more restrictive provisions. And even this meagre document required an extra negotiating day and meetings to the wee hours.
Never say never, but I am very relieved.
It is good news that the pandemic treaty has been largely neutered. But the idea that the WHO should be empowered to recommend lockdowns still seems very unwise to me. Would our politicians and officials really have the testicular fortitude to rely on their own cool assessments of the evidence rather than just go along with what the WHO is telling them to do, and which would inevitably have the jumpy public behind it as well? The UK would be sensible to listen to this letter, then, and opt out of the ‘advisory’ WHO powers as well.
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As The Ronald would have observed, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the WHO and I’m hear to help’.”
Last official body on the planet I’d want texting, posting or visiting when down with the sniffles, snuffles and sneezums.
“There was no pandemic, it was the State that killed Granny.”
Can’t we just opt out of WHO completely? The UK is now the largest contributor of Core Voluntary funds to the World Health Organization. This is outrageous!
Did anybody ever vote for the endless draining away of the lifeblood of the UK?
The USA was right to leave the WHO.
WHO Funding by Country 2025
UK- $230,000,000
Sweden- $23,000,000
France- $7,000,000
Spain- $6,000,000
£230,000,000. could be better spent here, not on some International body that feels greater than its worth.
Absolutely. Sweden is twice as large as the UK, but we pay ten times more than Sweden every year to the WHO. Spain is also twice as large as the UK, but pays only $6 million, compared to the UK’s $230 million!
What has WHO ever done for the British Taxpayers forced to lavish their hard-earned money on it? Who in the WHO has been trousering all our cash?
And why is that totally discredited Ethiopian Marxist Terrorist still in charge of the World’s Health? Why was he bizarrely chosen in the first place, as if no one else could be found?
And why is Jeremy Farrar ex Wellcome Trust and a chief Lab-Escape Denier and Lockdown enthusiast, now the WHO’S “Chief Scientist”?
And why is Susan Michie (aks “Stalin’s Nanny” amongst her Communist Party comrades and also HMG’s chief promoter of the Nudge unit and active member of both HMG’s SAGE and also “Indepedent SAGE”, now working for WHO in a similar role? Just “Look into her eyes” (and bank account) for the reason.
As for “waiting for the results of the Covid Inquiry”, what for? I can’t believe anyone on here could not have written the recommendations that Dame Hallett and her KCs will come up with after another couple of years and another couple of Million pounds:- “The Lockdown should have been Sooner, Harsher and have Lasted much Longer and everyone (except our Beloved Leaders) should have been force-vaccinated and multi-boosted.”
Thanks for showing this ridiculous disparity in financing of WHO. How do our incompetent civil servants allow this to happen? Yes I agree, we should leave the WHO
“While earlier proposed amendments to the IHRs suggested that the WHO could have the power to impose public health measures on member states, the latest version only gives it the ability to recommend an approach.”
And of course once these revised IHR have been “passed” it will only be a matter of time before the barbs and arrows are added as amendments.
Kneel is determined – as per his orders – to give away our sovereignty and this will be yet another nail in our coffin; to believe otherwise is the essence of stupidity and ignorance.
Fourteen “leading parliamentarians,” is that all that can be mustered from 650? What a ruddy disgrace. Shocking not to see a Reform MP amongst the signatories.
I do not share Dr Meryl Nass’s relief. Her naïvity is somewhat worrying.
Sorry but with all due respect to DS, isn’t this rather irrelevant. We’re not bound to follow anything the WHO does. What will they do if we ignore them? Invade us?
There was no “pandemic treaty” during “covid” yet we still had a lockdown.
Starmer would LOVE to lock us down forever. He wanted more than we got which was a disaster as it was. Starmerites LOVE such as the WHO
The WHO and any “pandemic treaty” are just useful excuses for governments to do what they wanted to do anyway.
I actually. think it’s a pretty big deal. And the so-called watering down of the treaty is, in effect, no such thing. Here’s my reasoning.
If there was another attempted rerun of some kind of covid, the resistance from the public to the same measures would be considerably greater. Enough to stop all the mad policies? I don’t know, but in any case much more than in 2020 where people were overwhelmed by the shock and awe of the whole thing.
So I’m not sure we’d have the same outcome UNLESS we are somehow bound to doing the same crap all over again, which brings me to the second point which is that in effect there is no watering down and this new treaty is in practical terms the same as binding.
The device of “recommendations” is an insidious form of imposition. It imposes things while appearing not to. Official recommendations don’t have to be followed, but if someone choses not to, they are under pressure to explain why not. And more importantly, they are automatically sticking their neck out to go against official recommendations.
I ask you, what public official is going to stick their neck out to go against official WHO recommendations that they’ve agreed in advance to follow in principle? None.
This is the process by which the climate agenda, the LGBTQ agenda and pretty much every left wing collectivist project advances. Stacking up layer upon layer of guidance, recommendation, that eventually morph into laws, so that one day you find yourself smothered under it all and the process of undoing it all is gargantuan.
This so called watered down treaty is one more jet of current to swim against when the moment comes. If it were pointless and meaningless, they wouldn’t be pushing for it as they are.
Thank god for the US opting out. That does more than anything else to render the whole thing pointless. Here’s hoping a future administration doesn’t back track.
Yes that’s a good point – it certainly makes it a lot easier to impose restrictions, which would be the path of least resistance, to an extent. This time around a lot more people are awake to the fact that WHO has little to do with “health”, but that may not be sufficient.
Many, many months ago I read an article from somebody with the links to know and he confirmed that in its original iteration the IHR regs would ensure that state non-compliance would be met with a barrage of economic and political sanctions. Anybody stupid enough to believe that this “watering down” carries any validity is a mug. The whole point is to get these regulations recognised and accepted, the more pernicious add-ons will follow as required.
The IHR regs are designed to strip states of their sovereignty. Kneel is more than happy to oblige – Davos or Westminster?
Between now and July there will a multitude of minor distractions unleashed by Kneel’s gangsters in an attempt to keep this thoroughly evil paperwork out of the headlines. Once the WHO have got what they want I predict a new Scamdemic within 12 – 18 months and far worse in its restrictions than the C1984. They aren’t importing an army for nothing.
That’s the theory.
The reality is that the WHO was (and is) held up by our Beloved Leaders as a source of “The Settled Science”.
Did Marriana Spring and BBC “Verity” Chat Fekkers ever criticise WHO?
Oh. I thought not.
Where are Reform on this ?? + the rest of the so called MP, s !! ??
This is where the Heritage Party stand on the matter:
“To truly regain our sovereignty, we must re-think our membership of international organisations and agreements which previous governments have signed. We should remain members of international bodies, treaties and conventions which are beneficial to our national interests, but we should not join or continue to be part of globalist arrangements which dilute our sovereignty and interfere with our democracy by imposing conditions and policies on the nation which the people never voted for. These include the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Paris Climate Agreement, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). “
Not really true. Parliament can st any time decide to ignore any other body, domestic or foreign.
But would they have the balls to do so? If the UK does not opt out at this stage ‘we’ will be pre-inclined to obey when the WHO cries ‘Panic!’.
Not really relevant. If they won’t exert the power the people lend them why would they do it now.
The trouble is any diktat that comes from an ‘official’ body is always gold-plated by our inept politicians.
Take the hospitality industry and specifically pubs. When the smoking ban came in no pub was permitted to allow smoking indoors. Same for airports etc. This ban has effectively destroyed our world famous pub scene and resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. With a knock-on effect of less revenue for HMRC.
When I was in Germany last year I was stunned when I walked into a bar and there were ashtrays on every table and on the bar – apparently smoking in a bar was permitted if the owner chose to allow it. Also smoking rooms are provided in the airports once you have passed immigration. The same goes for Denmark.
But not in the UK.
Has anyone ever seriously asked what the point in the WHO is in the first place? If each individual member state itself is kitted out with all the relevant health experts to forge a response to a pandemic as it plays out in their own country, then why on earth do we need to defer to another set of unaccountable “experts” who may well be less qualified than our own?
The absurdity of a small group of unelected individuals in Geneva choreographing a global response to a health emergency is palpable. The Trump administration has made quite possibly the best possible political manoeuvre in untethering itself from the WHO altogether. The UK needs to follow its lead.
That said, our fuhrer Starmer wouldn’t need a directive from above to enact any of the WHO’s “recommendations”. Even if we did leave, we’d still be subject to all the same crackpot restrictions in the event of a pandemic, because the “Labour Communist Party of Britain” would put them in place anyway!
I must have missed the Lockdown Sceptics report of Braverman speaking out against “covid” restrictions
Bridgen, Drax, Frost, Walker… I can’t think of any more MPs off the top of my head who spoke out against it all. Only those four.
Some more eventually did not agree to continuation of all the nonsensical and downright evil, destructive restrictions, but all in all a depressingly lacklustre showing.
Sir Desmond Swayne described government policy as “herd stupidity” in the HoC. The DUP lot were pretty solidly against it from a certain point.
Just another form of our country being grossly abused by its insane leaders.
Reject World Health Dictatorship
The idea that 2tk would ever pull out of an international treaty is ludicrous.
https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1914230386982261081
Fond er lying now pushing for mandatory vaccination. They will have to kill me first.
me too.
Yes.
That will be part of their plan.
How about banning the very idea of a pandemic and all vaccines? Was any recent pandemic ever proven to be real? Is there any vaccine that has been proven to be beneficial?
The last so-called pandemic in this country was the Black Death of the 17th century.
The headline here seems to be misleading. Is it on the right article?
We surely do not need to be part of the WHO to see their recommendations and ignore them or explore them further as we as a sovereign state see fit. Why don’t we leave the WHO as the US has and make minimal grants to it only if we see benefit in their recommendations?