Government Makes Laughable Claim the MHRA is “Globally Recognised for Requiring High Standards of Safety and Effectiveness”

On Friday March 17th 2023, there was an Adjournment debate in the House of Commons about the Covid vaccines. Here are the video and transcript.

Andrew Bridgen MP used the Government’s own data about the ‘number needed to vaccinate to prevent a COVID-19 hospitalisation’ to demonstrate that the Covid vaccines are not safe, effective or value for money.

It was damning. Given the serious adverse event rate from the vaccines of one in 800, the Government’s own data showed that for all healthy people and all those considered at risk under 70, the probability of being seriously harmed by Covid is significantly outweighed by the risks associated with the Covid vaccines. And for over-70s with health problems, the risk from Covid is the same as the risk from the vaccine – they are just switching one risk for another.

Will Quince MP replied for the Government. He swerved Bridgen’s reference to vaccine harms and trotted out the usual narrative: “Countless studies have shown that vaccinated people are less likely to die or become seriously ill from the virus.” His only attempt to rebut Bridgen’s reference to vaccine harms was to laud the drugs regulator the MHRA.

I have been very critical of the MHRA over the last eight months so I want to dissect what Will Quince MP said about MHRA.

Will Quince MP is the Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care responsible, amongst other things, for “medicines and medicines regulation”. So Andrew Bridgen MP was actually wrong to say that his speech “is neither his (Quince’s) area of responsibility nor his area of expertise”. It absolutely ishis area of responsibility.

Will Quince MP defended the Covid vaccines saying “all the vaccines used in the U.K. COVID-19 vaccination programme have been through a vigorous approval process. The U.K. has some of the highest safety standards in the world, and the independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is globally recognised for requiring high standards of quality, safety and effectiveness.”

“A vigorous approval process” is a bit of a stretch, to say the least. Here are just three issues:

• MHRA approved the first Covid vaccine in December 2020 after about only 10 months of clinical trials when new medicines typically take 5-10 years to get to market;
• MHRA ignored new draft regulations for mRNA products. Instead, it used the same regulations as traditional vaccines. This lowered the regulatory requirements, resulting in limited evaluation of pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics and toxicology;

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