(May 26th,
2024)
Hansard is often not an easy read. But I recently
stumbled on the transcript of a parliamentary debate on excess deaths and COVID
vaccines, called by Andrew Bridgen MP and held on April 18th, 2024.
It is here: [[1]].
It is a fascinating read, albeit a very long one. As a signatory of the
e-petition which led to the debate, I thank Mr Bridgen for his efforts to bring
these most important issues to wider attention.
It has become clear to me that there is a small minority
of MPs who, in contrast to the usual contemptuous attitude of politicians
towards the people they are supposed to serve, actually do make genuine efforts
to represent their constituents. I have noticed that, whenever I read up on a
parliamentary debate on a subject of interest to me, the same names seem to
come up again and again. Andrew Bridgen, Christopher Chope and Graham Stringer,
to name three. It seems that, despite party differences, these three and a
small handful of other MPs are committed to bringing up, and opening up for
debate, subjects that are of vital importance to the people of the UK. Even in
the face of wilful ignorance, or worse, from the establishment.
I do wonder if part of the reason these three stand out
from the pack is that two of them have degree level qualifications in the
“hard” sciences. While the third is a lawyer, a profession requiring an ability
to learn very rapidly the most significant details of a client’s case.
A profound truth
In this particular debate, the three names I mentioned
were all prominent. But it is not one of their contributions that I wish to
bring to your attention today. That honour goes to a Scottish MP, Neale Hanvey,
whose profession for over 25 years has been nursing. I confess that, before my
attention was drawn to this debate, I had not heard of him or his party, ALBA,
who call themselves “the Party that cares about Scotland’s independence as much
as you do.”
Mr Hanvey uttered, at the end of his first major speech in
this debate, one of the most profound truths I have ever heard from the mouth
of an MP. Speaking about clinical trials of new medicines – in which he has long
experience – he said: “I think that, as politicians, as clinicians and as the
industry, we all carry a duty of honesty and candour in these matters.” Hence
the title of this essay.
The parliamentary debate
Before I consider the implications of Mr Hanvey’s words, I
will say a little about the debate itself. In his opening speech, Mr Bridgen
described the excess deaths in 2022 and 2023 as “the greatest medical scandal
in this country in living memory, and possibly ever.” He lamented that the
Office for National Statistics (ONS) had ceased, for reasons they would not
publish, to provide death statistics broken down by vaccination status. He
quoted Boris Johnson’s statement that the vaccine “doesn’t protect you against
catching the disease and it doesn’t protect you against passing it on.” He
concluded: “It is time to take the politics out of our science, and to put
actual science back into our politics.” And he called for “Baroness Hallett’s
inquiry to open module 4 on the safety and efficacy of the experimental
covid-19 vaccines,” and urged the government “to immediately suspend the use of
all mRNA treatments in both humans and animals, pending the outcome of that
inquiry.” There was applause from the public gallery.
Danny Kruger MP spoke of the recent change in methodology,
that the ONS had begun to use to calculate excess deaths figures for the UK. As
it happens, a few weeks before this debate, I had written about that change: [[2]].
I have to say that my view of the ONS’s conduct, from the perspective of a Cambridge
mathematics graduate and an amateur ethical and political philosopher, is a lot
less charitable than Mr Kruger’s. I described the change as “breaking the link
between their figures and hard evidence from the real world.”
Nevertheless, Mr Kruger did rightly express strong
concerns about the non-availability of the record-level data, that is necessary
in order to make an objective assessment of a situation such as this one.
It was shortly after this that Mr Hanvey made his major
contribution to the debate. It comes over very clearly indeed that he knows his
business. And it is interesting that his view on the ONS’s methodology change
is far closer to mine than to Mr Kruger’s. Indeed, he said that the change “might
be a reasonable change in practice at a time of peace, if you like, but we have
just come through a very difficult period with the pandemic. Changing the
methodology immediately afterwards seems perverse at best and deeply concerning
at worst… It is not a good idea – just in terms of scientific rigour, it is
problematic.”
And then we had the reply from the parliamentary
under-secretary of state, Maria Caulfield MP. The figure she stated for excess
deaths in 2023 was close to (an England-only subset of) the figure the ONS
calculated using the new methodology, not the old. That was incorrect, as in
2023 the old methodology was still being used for the published data. The
figure should have been around three times as high. This, I think, was
dishonesty.
She also stated that “every week in 2024 so far, we have
had negative excess deaths.” She seemed to completely ignore Mr Hanvey’s
concerns over the methodology change. You can’t compare peas with apples! I am certain
that neither Mr Bridgen nor Mr Hanvey were fooled, nor indeed Mr Stringer or
Sir Christopher. But what of the remaining MPs there? And what of those (the
great majority), who were not at this debate? Were they thinking, there is a
real problem here, that must be addressed? Or just “nothing to see here, move
on?” Ms Caulfield’s statement was, in my opinion, misleading. It was certainly
not candid.
Neale Hanvey’s words
To return to Mr Hanvey’s words. Both the words, “honesty”
and “candour,” are somewhat slippery. According to the dictionary, honesty is
“the quality of being honest.” While honest means “free of deceit; truthful and
sincere.” Candour, on the other hand, means “the quality of being honest and
telling the truth, especially about a difficult or embarrassing subject.” My 1928
Pocket Oxford defines it simply as “candidness.” And candid means
“unprejudiced, free from dissimulation or reserve; outspoken, blunt, &c.”
There is, however, a difference in emphasis between the two
words. Myself, while I think of honesty as telling the truth and nothing but
the truth, then candour becomes the middle part of the famous oath: telling the
whole truth.
As to the “duty” which “we all have,” that word means “a
moral or legal obligation; a responsibility.” I am aware, also, that the phrase
“duty of candour” has a meaning specific to Mr Hanvey’s professional
environment, the NHS. That is: “the legal duty to be open and honest when
things go wrong.” And on whom did Mr Hanvey place this duty? He defined the
“we,” to whom the duty applies, as “politicians,” “clinicians” and “the
industry.”
Considering that Mr Hanvey applied the duty to politicians
as well as to medics, I think his words can be construed as applying, not only to
the restricted context of NHS medical practice, but also to a more general
“duty of honesty and candour” among human beings.
Are politicians honest and candid?
Now, of course, politicians in general are not noted for
either honesty or candour. Here are some examples I gave in my essay on the ONS
methodology change. “Three weeks to flatten the curve.” “Saddam Hussein has
weapons of mass destruction.” “There’s a climate crisis.” To say there is no
climate crisis is “denial,” “misinformation” or “conspiracy theory.” “The Post
Office Horizon system is free from faults.” “The COVID vaccines are safe and
effective.”
I suppose I should add to this list Sadiq Khan’s
characterization of opponents of ULEZ expansion as “anti-vaxxers, Covid
deniers, conspiracy theorists and Nazis.” And Ms Caulfield’s statement in the
debate that “every week in 2024 so far, we have had negative excess deaths.” This
last is, in a particular and very strict interpretation, true. But in my
opinion, it is neither honest nor candid.
Cynically, I like to summarize my view on the matter as:
“There’s only one honest politician in this country. And that’s a pub in
Southsea.”
Do we have a right to be treated with honesty and candour?
All this said, Mr Hanvey has encapsulated, in one simple
sentence, a prescription for honesty and candour in all of human life. That is
why his words came over to me as so significant, and just simply right.
It was at this point that the ethical philosopher in me
kicked into action. If we all – members of “the industry” of medicine, or
politics, or any other walk of life – have a moral duty to be honest and candid
towards those we deal with, does that not imply that we have also a corresponding
right and expectation, to be treated honestly and candidly by others?
I should perhaps pause to explain where I come from in my
ethical thinking. There are three main tendencies in ethics. First, the virtue
ethicists, such as Aristotle, who see (or saw) ethics in terms of laundry-lists
of virtues. Second, the deontologists or obligation-based ethicists, who see it
in terms of lists of duties or obligations. And third, rights ethicists, who
see it in terms of lists of rights, such as the US bill of rights or the UN
declaration of human rights. I come from this third tendency. But I recognize
that rights and obligations can always be “back-to-backed,” if not always with
a perfect one-to-one mapping. Thus, there is in my view not so much difference
between deontologists and rights ethicists as many think.
I also take the view that rights are not granted by some
government or deity. Instead, you earn your rights, by respecting the equal
rights of others. In return, if you discharge your duty to respect the rights
of others, your own rights must be sacrosanct.
Of course, taking the view that there is a moral obligation
on everyone to behave with honesty and candour, there are nevertheless circumstances
where to discharge it may not be practical. For example, if you are under
physical attack by an enemy, being honest and candid may well not be the best
way to defend yourself! But such circumstances – such as self-defence, or
defence of another – are exceptional and, for most people, rare. To make
allowance for exceptions in such circumstances does not detract from the moral
force of the obligation, or of the right to which it corresponds.
The times we’re in
It is not the purpose of this essay to dwell on all the political
things that are wrong in the UK today. But with a general election upcoming,
the three major parties (Tories, Labour and Lib Dems) are all severely
compromised. All want essentially the same bad policies such as high taxes,
nanny-state laws, violations of our rights like freedom of speech, and “net
zero.” They offer nothing but negatives to most ordinary people. The Greens are
even worse: they are seeking to destroy our industrial civilization, and to
suppress the human species.
Only Reform UK and perhaps some Independents offer any
positive ideas, or any hope for the future, at all. But their chances of
winning the election are about the same as an individual’s chance of winning
the Euromillions jackpot. Despite this, I have taken on the unpaid job of
campaign manager for my local Reform candidate, in the hope that I can help the
party cause sufficient disruption to bring about a longer-term sea-change.
A little political philosophy
Now, it is the turn of the political philosopher in me to
spring into action. I am a great fan of John Locke, the 17th-century
English thinker who fathered the Enlightenment. And not just because of the
similarity between our surnames! He was the first to take the view that all government
must be for the benefit of the governed. And that it must be only for the
“public good,” which he defined as “the good of every particular member of that
society, as far as by common rules it can be provided for.”
Locke was also quite clear about the rights of the governed,
in the event that government fails to discharge its duty of acting for the
public good of every individual. Real criminals such as murderers, rapists and
thieves excepted of course. We have the right to put the power of government
into different hands, as for example we did in 1688. If this works, well and
good. At the second level, if we cannot find suitable hands in which to place
the power, we have the right to dismantle the system of government, and erect a
new one in its place. If even this cannot be made to work, we have ultimately
the right to abandon the whole project of government, and return to Locke’s
“state of Nature.” In which, “being all equal and independent, no one ought to
harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”
It is my view that we have now exhausted the possibilities
of the first level of change. We are now staring down the barrel at the second
level. We must dismantle the current political system, the Westphalian nation
state, and replace it by something workable for us ordinary human beings. I
have gone so far as to sketch an outline (a 14,000-word outline!) of the causes
of our problems today, and how we might go about fixing them. It is here: [[3]].
Should government always behave with honesty and candour?
I mention, in the paper I referenced above on “what is to be
done,” a strengthening of the mind-set, which I think we human beings need to
go through before we can make progress from where we are. I take the view that
before we can mount effective political action against what is being done to
us, we need first to engage in, fight and win a moral and intellectual war. And
the stronger mind-set will be an important part of our weaponry in that moral
war.
I shall now explain why I have devoted so much time and
effort to so few words of Neale Hanvey MP. In this essay, I have sought
to present a logical case for an idea which is really just simple common sense.
That idea is, that government must always behave, towards the people it is tasked
to serve, with a duty of honesty and candour.
Those, who have the stomach for it, can check the facts, to
see how far away from discharging that duty has been the conduct of successive
governments over the last several decades. You will come, I think, to see just
how radical, and yet at the same time common-sense, this idea is.
And for the avoidance of doubt, this idea implies that everyone
in government, without exception, must discharge that duty to the full.
Politicians national and local, bureaucrats, quangocrats, advisors and all the
rest. From the panjandrums of Whitehall to the overpaid and overreaching
council bosses, and all the way down to the humblest road-mender.
What, I ask you, if an “Honesty Audit” were to be done on
government as it exists today? What if every employee of government, every
individual whose job is paid for directly or indirectly by taxpayers, were to
be audited, by objective, honest and independent parties, for how well they
have behaved towards the people they are supposed to be serving, in terms of
honesty and candour? And what if we simply Dumped the Dishonest? What if every
such individual, that had ever showed significant dishonesty or insincerity
towards the people who paid for them, were simply dismissed with prejudice, their
cushy pensions cancelled, and never allowed any post in government ever again?
Well, what, indeed? By her conduct in this debate, Maria
Caulfield MP seems to have placed herself in “pole position” for the chop.
I will close by offering my thanks to Andrew Bridgen, Neale Hanvey, and a few other brave MPs who, if tested in this way, would likely pass the test with flying colours. And with these words of Bishop Hugh Latimer, burned at the stake in 1555: We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
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