National Health Service — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: Civil Rights
William Peter Wragg (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), and indeed the speaker before him, my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans). They are two learned medical practitioners who, with the underlying qualities that seem to attract to those positions, state their arguments in the finest tradition of the empirical method. As ever, I hope I can be forgiven for not being quite as rational as those two speakers I hope, too, that the House will indulge me because, frankly, I am in despair. We could perhaps have a painting next to me of Munch’s "The Scream" to get a sense of how I feel about the conduct of Government business in this House. The Government are treating this House with utter contempt: 90 minutes on a statutory instrument to fundamentally change the balance of human rights in this country is nothing short of a disgrace. It is a disgrace, too, that no impact assessment exists. I contend that it does not exist, and if that is proven to be the case I am afraid my hon. Friend the Minister will be in a tricky position if she contends it does when it does not The measures before us are in themselves entirely impractical. We have heard already about concerns about the workforce. I have the utmost respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, as he knows, but if we were to follow his suggestion, I fear that it would be far too late to repair the damage done to the workforce of carers in this country It is an insult to care workers in this country that all they merit is 90 minutes on a motion that nobody here seemed to know anything about last week but which we are discussing this afternoon. Meanwhile, so many of our colleagues, presumably because of the proxy vote system and the fact that they find it generally inconvenient to be a Member of Parliament, will know nothing at all about the measures on which they are voting, and that too should concern us a great deal. I will vote against these measures, if that had not been made clear from my remarks so far. I believe that 1898 was last time vaccination was mandated in this country, and following that mandate, the rates of vaccination fell. That should tell us all we need to know. We will give succour to lunatics and crackpots who advance ridiculous theories about vaccination if we mandate vaccination. The triumph of the vaccination programme has been the act of kindness that people have felt towards their fellow citizens in doing so, and we will lose that good will if we mandate it A lady called me a week or so ago, and she was in tears on the phone. She has a condition that involves blood clots, and she associated the news about one or two of the vaccines with her condition. She is a care worker, and she was distraught. She now equates her illness and the vaccination—and the fact that she cannot get a GP appointment to discuss it, but that is a different matter—with losing her job. Is that what we are prepared to do to our fellow citizens as a Conservative Government? Absolute lunacy! We would expect this in a communist country, which partly explains why so many of our eastern European fellow citizens have the scepticism they do, knowing the nature of the state and how it can be perceived as being malevolent This instrument is an abomination. It should be withdrawn, and the Government should stop treating this House with contempt.